How to Eat Like a Viking

If you were to go by pop culture versions of Viking feasts, a meal would be laden with whole animals roasted over a spit, accompanied by plenty of alcoholic beverages. While that may be appropriate for a celebratory dinner after a successful pillaging, it's not what most people of the Viking era ate. Daniel Serra is the world's foremost expert on Viking cuisine, and has published a cookbook of Viking recipes. He also gives demonstrations of historic cooking in recreated Viking villages in Scandinavia. But how do you recreate meals from a culture that didn't write anything down?

Serra studies a combination of sources, such as archaeological digs, mentions of food in orally-preserved Viking sagas, and extrapolating back from later written recipes. He cross-references his findings with the science of what the area was like in the Viking age, what resources were available, and what the culture was like. Then he tests his recipes and cooking methods to see if they work.

Serra describes the everyday "comfort foods" that Viking communities would produce, and even shares a recipe for Traveller's Fish Porridge at BBC's World's Table. -via Digg