Medieval Icelandic Feasts | Historical past Immediately
Blessed be the givers!
A visitor has are available,
the place is he going to sit down?
He’s in nice haste, the one who by the log-stack goes to strive his luck.
Hearth is needful for somebody who’s are available
and who’s chilled to the knee;
meals and clothes are mandatory for the person
who’s journeyed over the mountains.
As the times develop colder and the chilly fingers of the northern wind inch their means beneath collars, ideas naturally flip in the direction of among the elementary joys – in search of heat, sharing meals, having fun with the corporate of others, and fostering togetherness. These timeless pleasures evoke the Germanic medieval period, when communal feasting and the show of hospitality served as cornerstones of social bonding and celebration, and whose winter traditions – the availability of clothes, heat and meals for the weary traveller – stay ubiquitous as we speak. The verse above, from the Icelandic poem Hávamál, is only a small a part of a group of Previous Norse poems discovered within the Codex Regius manuscript. Written within the thirteenth century, the Codex Regius is crucial manuscript preserving these poems. It offers insights into the non secular and ethical beliefs of the Viking Age and is a vital supply for understanding Norse mythology, knowledge and cultural values; it makes clear, for instance, that a part of Germanic hospitality included the providing of generosity and kindness to any wintertime customer. You by no means know who could arrive at your door.
The identical manuscript containing the sage knowledge of Hávamál additionally holds Grimnismál, a narrative which cautions its readers much more candidly. The gods Óðinn, the all-father and god of knowledge, and his spouse Frigg, goddess of marriage and childbirth, have been looking over the worlds once they spied King Geirroð, whom Frigg remarked was so miserly and inhospitable that he would torture his visitors if he thought there have been too lots of them. Óðinn didn’t imagine this, and the couple made a wager on it. Coming into a feast at Geirroð’s corridor in disguise because the lowly Grímnir, Óðinn refused to reply the king’s impertinent questions on his id, making issues worse by sitting in a seat reserved just for crucial visitor, which the king forbade anybody to sit down in. Geirroð, already warned {that a} magician was arriving at his court docket to bespell him, had Grímnir tied up within the nice fire and tortured for eight days. However the king’s son confirmed Óðinn kindness, bringing him water in the dark. For this, Óðinn prophesied that the boy could be an amazing king in his personal proper, and that his father’s days of glory have been over. Realising what he had achieved, Geirroð rushed to untie Óðinn; in his haste, his sword fell to the ground hilt-down, impaling and killing the king.
In contrast to Dickens’ curmudgeonly Ebenezer Scrooge, within the mythology of the Grimnismál there are not any second probabilities for its coldhearted protagonist. So the message goes, take care to make sure that your visitors’ bellies are full, their beer plentiful and their seating befitting of their rank, lest you end up in a blood feud by New Yr.
Because the medieval cautionary tales of the sagas present, the stakes for the Icelandic Yuletide are increased than one may realise. Central nonetheless to those celebrations is the feast. Icelandic meals traditions are deeply rooted in historic practices, reflecting the resilience and resourcefulness of its individuals who stay within the nation’s usually harsh and changeable local weather. Hangikjöt, or smoked lamb, originated within the ninth century, when the land was settled by Norse explorers and meat was preserved by hanging and smoking over birch wooden (hangikjöt means ‘hung meat’).
One other standard modern dish with a deep-rooted historic context is rjúpa, or rock ptarmigan, a small recreation fowl native to Iceland. This fowl is roasted or fried and accompanied by different preserved meats, crimson cabbage and lingonberries. On the time of the arrival of the primary settlers Iceland was uninhabited, solely often used as a looking outpost for far-ranging Norwegians. The Norse individuals have been compelled to eat what little animal life is native to Iceland as they waited for his or her livestock to flourish: birds such because the ptarmigan and their eggs; síld or pickled herring; berries, one of many nation’s few edible crops; and small portions of greens and grain that have been grown throughout the Medieval Warming Interval (c.950-1250), a climatic interval that caused increased temperatures in sure areas and had the potential to radically alter ecosystems – for a time. From these small quantities of grain, Icelanders might make what they referred to as laufabrauð, ‘leaf bread’, a cracker-like bread reduce with intricate patterns – snowflakes and tiny triangles – reduce earlier than frying. This, too, is a testomony to the lean instances earlier than the sunshine and new lambs arriving in spring: Icelanders took dwindling grain provides and made them into one thing stunning.
The aspect dishes and desserts, too, carry a wealthy custom. For hundreds of years Iceland remained an outlier, remoted from its continental European contemporaries. The meals provide was restricted to what could possibly be produced on the Island; Skyr for instance, a gentle Icelandic cheese, is whipped into pillowy mounds and sprinkled with apples, berries and honey. The dish is greater than culinary delight – it displays historical celebrations, the resilience of the individuals, and the resourcefulness ingrained over centuries of farming on the sting of the Arctic Circle. The simplicity of those elements is a testomony to the endurance of a tradition within the face of uncertainty, dwelling in sod huts half underground, the place girls labored to supply the perfect skyr, butter and cheese. Within the late medieval interval meals provides started step by step to enhance, as Iceland started to have interaction in additional commerce. Spices grew to become extra out there to Icelandic retailers, evidenced by piparkökur, Icelandic gingerbread biscuits, showing on tables subsequent to the laufabrauð and skyr. By 1758 potatoes have been efficiently being grown in Iceland; earlier than lengthy they have been included into vacation meals with a caramelised topping of sugar and butter.
The Icelandic sagas, written in Previous Norse throughout the thirteenth century, set down the nation’s wealthy historical past in writing. Recounting the historic occasions of the nation’s tumultuous early settlement alongside legendary tales and the (considerably fictionalised) experiences of early Icelandic settlers, the sagas, notably the Icelandic Household Sagas – of which Egils saga Skallagrímssonar is one – echo each day life in the beginning of Icelandic society. A style of prose narratives created by scribes, each these working for the church and people employed by rich landowners, they convey the significance of feasting and gift-giving in medieval Iceland, mandatory as conspicuous shows of wealth and consumption and important to the formation of relationships.
In Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, a narrative relationship again to 1250 in its oldest fragment, the saga hero Egil – a big, sturdy man descended from trolls, with a present for poetry and magic runes – went about his common end-of-year enterprise earlier than becoming a member of in Yuletide celebrations. Internet hosting a lavish Christmas feast, the character Arinbjorn invited mates and distinguished farmers, and introduced Egil with a specifically tailor-made silk robe adorned with gold embroidery and buttons. Egil, appreciative of Arinbjorn’s generosity, composed a verse expressing admiration for the exceptional host and his festive items:
The nice man gave me
The gold-spun silk robe,
Freely he conferred it,
No finer pal than he.
Arinbjorn has energy
that compares with princes’;
Lengthy the wait
Until his like lives once more.
Sjálfráði lét slœður
silki drengr of fengit
gollknappaðar greppi,
getk aldri vin betra;
Arinbjǫrn hefr árnat
eirarlaust eða meira,
sið man seggr of fœðask
slíkr, oddvita ríki.
Although the phrases of a medieval Icelandic saga could seem spare and undescriptive to a contemporary reader, we are able to sense Egil’s gratitude for therefore superb a present on a chilly winter’s night time; Arinbjorn has made a beneficiant gesture, and it’ll not be forgotten. As we immerse ourselves within the sagas, the sensory impressions of winter celebrations come alive; the spiced meats, hearty stews and the clacking of consuming horns full of mead and ale permit us to glimpse the cultural and social practices of medieval Iceland in all their richness, throughout a celebration of the harvest that may carry Iceland’s inhabitants via the coldest, most barren a part of the 12 months.
In Iceland as we speak, every spoonful of skyr or chew of hangikjöt is a stanza in a culinary verse of its personal, a testomony to nature and timeless traditions that also embody its medieval roots. A thousand years on the sagas, evoking the essence of Norse tradition and hinting on the deep fireplaces of a dim longhouse and the energetic chatter of visitors crowding these benches closest to the flames, nonetheless provide shrewd recommendation for the Xmas festivities: that each nice reward deserves a poem in its honour, that you would be able to by no means have an excessive amount of meals, and to at all times guarantee that there’s room on the desk for another, ought to a visitor come knocking at your door.
Beth Rogers is an teacher and PhD scholar on the College of Iceland in Reykjavík, Iceland, finding out matters of meals historical past and medieval Icelandic tradition.