What Did The Vikings Really Eat?

The Vikings are often depicted as brutes, little more than barbarians who raided and plundered peaceful settlements throughout northern Europe. While they did colonize regions of Europe between the 9th and the 11th century, according to Britannica, there's much more to these Scandinavian warriors than meets the eye. Hailing from modern-day Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, the Vikings built a sophisticated Norse culture that included far more than warriors. Many of them were anything but bloodthirsty killers, such as farmers, fishermen, and traders who roved far afield to make a profit (via History Extra).

For much of their history, the Vikings weren't an especially literary culture and so didn't write down their recipes. The earliest Scandinavian cookbook was only first compiled between 1300 and 1350, as per the Viking Answer Lady. Instead, they passed their culinary know-how down by word of mouth. It would have varied considerably from region to region since Norsemen established settlements in places as far from home as Greenland and Russia. According to the Jorvik Viking Center, this naturally meant that the Viking diet would have varied depending on where those Vikings had settled.

Despite the sometimes forbidding landscapes of their settlements, the Vikings generally ate a balanced diet, with both the elite and common folk consuming meat daily. And while the Viking diet wasn't overly inventive, it's said that the Norsemen ate much better than their contemporaries in other cultures (via History). Here's what the Vikings really ate.

From magnates to sailors and the common folk, cattle were often the most important livestock for the Vikings. To that end, cattle remains have been found in large piles near Viking settlements in Scandinavia. These were found alongside traces of goat, sheep, and pig bones (via Sciencenorway). Viking communities also raised geese, chickens, and ducks for their meat and eggs. Generally, animals were only slaughtered as cold weather approached, maximizing their yield for the harsh winters ahead and conserving feed for the remaining animals, according to the Viking Answer Lady.

The Vikings also ate horse meat, although it was probably only consumed at festivals rather than as an everyday staple, as per Sciencenorway. Horse bones are scant around Viking settlements; instead, they have been discovered in wetlands, a hint that they may have been a part of ritual feasts. In the Christian Middle Ages, the consumption of horse meat became associated with pagan sacrifice.

While the Vikings did grill their meat on roasting spits, they preferred to boil it in stews. The meat and vegetables were usually cooked in large clay or iron pots. Eating was a community affair, with the stews sometimes boiling over open flames for days (via Vikings Brand).

While fresh food was abundant in many Viking settlements during the summer and fall, this wasn't the case for winter and spring. Many Norse found themselves in harsh environments with exceedingly cold winters, meaning that a mid-December salad was simply out of the question. As such, it was imperative to preserve foods for consumption during those harsh months. It's clear that the Vikings did something right here since modern research shows that they were rarely deficient in any vitamins or minerals (via History on the Net).

The Vikings usually slaughtered many of their sheep and cattle in October and pigs in November or December. This ensured that they didn't have to feed them during winter. They preserved the meat by salting, smoking, drying, fermenting, or pickling it in sour whey, depending on the region. In northern Scandinavia, freezing was also common, as Viking Answer Lady notes.

While salting was a great way of preserving food, the mineral was relatively expensive, since it had to be imported, according to Vikings Brand. This meant that many families resorted to drying or smoking their meat and fish. Archaeologists have discovered smokehouses and storage sheds that date back to the Viking Age (via Sons of Vikings). The Vikings also often fermented food in underground pits. Fermentation is still used in some Scandinavian dishes, including the famously pungent hakarl (fermented shark) sometimes consumed in modern Iceland, according to Atlas Obscura.

Cattle, goats, and sheep weren't just sources of meat for the Norse. All of these animals were also used to produce milk during the Viking Age. Indeed, most cows weren't slaughtered for meat until they had produced and fed a calf, with some milk cows kept alive for up to a decade, as History on the Net notes. While most Vikings enjoyed drinking milk, the product was usually processed further to make other, longer-lasting foods that could be consumed during winter.

Some of the dairy foods that were a hit with the Vikings included butter, buttermilk, cheese, and curds. Salt was usually added to cheese and butter to preserve them. Whey, which is the sour liquid that separates from the curds during the cheese-making process, was also used to help keep butter palatable for a long time, according to the Viking Answer Lady.

The Vikings also processed milk into skyr, a type of soft and mild-flavored yogurt that's still eaten by Icelandic people today (via Life in Norway). High in protein and low in sugar and fat, skyr is often seen as a healthy food in Scandinavia today, where it's often eaten for breakfast or as a snack (via Arla Foods). While skyr has a consistency similar to Greek yogurt, it has a thicker and creamier texture thanks to the unique Icelandic cultures and the amount of milk used to make it. Producing one cup of skyr requires around four cups of milk, according to Eating Well.

Since a lot of Viking settlements were inhospitable to crops for a significant portion of the year, Norse people generally didn't cultivate wheat. Growing the crop was only possible in some parts of Denmark. Instead, Vikings in other places usually focused on cultivating hardier grains such as barley, oats, and rye. Rather than grinding the grains into flour, like we do today, the Vikings more often boiled them until they were soft and could be swallowed more or less whole. The result wasn't always a hit at the dinner table. In the 13th-century Icelandic "Tale of Sarcastic Halli," the Vikings of Harald Hardrada's court express their disappointment when they are served porridge (via Sons of Vikings).

Viking communities used barley, rye, and oats to make unleavened loaves that didn't rely on rising agents such as yeast. The multigrain flatbread was commonly used to scoop up stews of boiled meat and vegetables. Norsemen also made sourdough loaves by adding buttermilk to bread dough (via So Yummy). A poem in the "Elder Edda" collection of medieval works, entitled "Rigsthula," describes the bread consumed by the common Viking folk as a rather stodgy, heavy affair full of bits of the original grain. The elite were more likely to eat white, refined bread, which indicates that the latter was probably made from imported wheat flour.

Aside from milk and water, the Vikings also enjoyed a slew of alcoholic beverages, namely beer, mead, and wine. While the Vikings drank beer daily, mead and wine were probably only enjoyed by royalty or on special occasions. Norse tales and poems often refer to beer and mead being drunk from lavishly-decorated horns — an image that most of us can readily conjure thanks to modern media (via Sons of Vikings).

Viking Age beer was brewed using barley, which grew well in the northern climate of most Norse settlements, sometimes with hops added for flavor and its preservative properties. The beer produced by the Norse would have been pretty weak when compared to the brews we drink today, as Life in Norway notes. Mead, on the other hand, was a stronger alcoholic concoction made from honey, which was cultivated in southern Scandinavia and imported by Viking settlements in other regions. The Vikings also would have made wine from various fruits. Since growing grapes wasn't possible in the chilly areas of many Viking settlements, the more affluent members of the Viking society probably imported grape wine from more southern locales, according to the Viking Answer Lady.