What the Vikings really ateWhat the Vikings really ate 

Ignore the background fragrance of the fish oil lamp, join us at the dining table to sample a little of what we Vikings tucked into of an evening. You can eat with your fingers – unless you brought your own knife or spoon.

Tonight we are having a common staple, Skause which is a meat and vegetable stew served with some flatbread (could be oat, barley or rye) which we bake on a flat stone. We even cultivate some of our own vegetables – cabbage, onions, beans and peas. We have salt and pepper and some of our well-to-do friends even have imported coriander, cumin and mustard.

We also use the barley to brew our own beer and we have hops to flavour it. On special occasions we might offer you mead, another alcoholic drink which we make from honey. We also use the honey as a sweetener and have it with wild fruit and nuts.

Dairy products are also available including milk, whey, cheese, butter, curd and skyr which is a bit like your modern-day yoghurt.

That was the Viking diet as envisaged in The Viking Handbok: Eat, Dress and Fight like a Warrior by author Kerjsti Egerdahl.

Archaeology also gives an insight into the Viking diet. A woman aged between 20-25 buried in the 1300s in a churchyard at the coastal city of Sandnes in southwest Norway was found to have some 80 per cent of her diet from the sea. This proportion corresponds well with the amount of seal bones collected from a midden located in front of a farmhouse nearby.

According to the human sample isotope study Human Diet and Subsistence Patterns in Norse Greenland AD c.980–AD c.1450 ‘subsistence depended on a combination of animal husbandry and hunting, especially of marine mammals to a varying degree and also of reindeer.’

The paper says sheep and goats were kept for both their secondary products (wool and milk) and their meat. Pigs, which in traditional Scandinavian societies were popular high-status source of meat, are represented in the animal-bone record but only in the first centuries of settlement.’

In Greenland, on medium and small-sized farms, goats and sheep replaced cattle over time.  The fact that even small sites with very limited pastures had cattle shows the importance the Norse Greenlanders placed on dairy products.

Fish consumed included young saithe (related to pollock) most likely caught from shore using nets or rods and line. Mature saithe, cod, and ling were abundant in the Norse middens, being indicative of boat-based fishing, according to Resources, Production, and Trade in the Norse Shetland.

The study says limpets and whelks were eaten during periods of famine. Poor as a long-term food resource due to their low nutritional value, they were crucial as a short-term source of calories and assured the survival as they were abundant throughout the year. Whales were hunted with hand harpoons. A lack of bird remains suggests they constituted a fairly minor food resource. The species eaten included gulls, shag, cormorant, and gannet.

_Sources:

• _{The Viking Handbok: Eat, Dress and Fight like a Warrior, Kerjsti Egerdahl, 2020.} 
• _{What did Vikings eat and drink? Viking Herald, 2024.}
• _{Human Diet and Subsistence Patterns in Norse Greenland AD c.980–AD c.1450: Archaeological Interpretations Jette Arneborg, Niels Lynnerup, and Jan Heinemeier. Journal of the North Atlantic, 2012.}
• _{Resources, Production, and Trade in the Norse Shetland Juha Marttila; Journal of the North Atlantic, 2016.}

See what happened when three museum staff had a bakeoff at Mjolner, the Viking themed restaurant in Redfern, Sydney.