Food Preservation

Figure 1. Stong Dairy Vat, Iceland. 

(see the diagram of the farm, here: http://www.thjodveldisbaer.is/en/buildings/fyrirmyndin---stong/)

Second, we have a story from Sturlunga's Saga

"Gizur saw that there was another vat set down into the earth nearby, and that there was whey in it; but the curd vat stood above and mostly hid the whey vat which was on the ground. There was room for a man to get into the whey vat, so Gizur got into it where it stood; he sat down in the whey, in his linen clothing only, and the whey came up to his chest. It was cold there in the whey."

Third, we have ethnographic and archaeological evidence of lacto-fermentation from various parts of Scandinavia. The world's oldest fermented food was found in Sweden, it is fermented fish dating from the Early Mesolithic (Beothius 2016). There are several traditional dishes which involve lacto-fermented foods, from fermented fish to sausages (Klingberg 2005, Svanberg 2015). In Iceland, many parts of sheep, sausages, and possibly some vegetables, are traditionally stored in sour whey vats (Dungal and Sigurjónsson 1967, Adalsteinsson 1990, Gísladóttir 1994, Butrico 2013, Mehler 2011). Whey vats are not a panacea, though lacto fermentation can preserve Vitamin C, scurvy was found in Viking Age Iceland (Richter and Eliasson 2008).

What, then, to put IN these whey vats? And how to make them! 

Our Whey Vats

There are LOTS of different interpretations of what a Viking Age whey vat might have contained. Gersvinda and I have different plans in this area, I’ll lay them out separately.

Option #1: the “long keeper” jars.

I use my standard vegetable fermenting liquid (3 TBS salt to 1 L water, or well boiled seawater). Loosely place vegetables into a sanitized glass canning jar, fill with fermenting brine, add a tablespoon of filtered yogurt whey. I put plastic reusable lid on the top, place in the refrigerator. MOSTLY at my house I do this with hot peppers and garlic (separately or together). They stay crisp for months. Eventually, the brine also tastes strongly of whatever was kept in it. Don’t refill them, start a new jar when the veg is gone. Occasionally they go murky or slimy and I just throw out that whole jar.

Option #2. Regular Ferments.

I use my standard fermenting liquid (brine + starter), add an airlock, and let the vegetables ferment until they stop bubbling. Then I put a full lid on, and place the jars in the fridge (see pages on fermenting vegetables).

Option #3. More whey.

Gervinda uses about half whey and half water (as much whey as she has on hand, she makes yogurt and skyrr regularly, so sometimes that's a lot). She then uses solid salt at the same ratio as given above, so for every liter of total liquid, she puts in 3 tablespoons of salt.

How to, recipes, etc are divided into meat and veg (links below)

Fermented Vegetables

Literature Cited 

Adalsteinsson, S. (1990). Importance of sheep in early Icelandic agriculture. Acta Archaeol, 61, 285-291.

Amilien, V. (2012). Nordic food culture–A historical perspective. Interview with Henry Notaker, Norwegian culinary expert. Anthropology of food, (S7).

Augustsson, H. 1989. Húsagerð á Síðmiðölðum. In: Saga Islands IV. Lindal, S. (ed.) 1989. Reykjavik: 261-297

Boethius, A. (2016). Something rotten in Scandinavia: the world's earliest evidence of fermentation. Journal of Archaeological Science, 66, 169-180.

Butrico, G. M. (2013). Food Security and Identity: Iceland(Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University).

Dungal, N., & Sigurjónsson, J. (1967). Gastric cancer and diet. A pilot study on dietary habits in two districts differing markedly in respect of mortality from gastric cancer. British journal of cancer, 21(2), 270.

Gísladóttir, H. (1994) The use of whey in Icelandic households. Milk and Milk Products from Medieval to Modern Times. ed. Patricia Lysaght, pp. 123-129. Precedings of the Ninth International Conference on Ethnological Food Research. Edinburgh: Conongate Academic.

Klingberg, T. D., Axelsson, L., Naterstad, K., Elsser, D., & Budde, B. B. (2005). Identification of potential probiotic starter cultures for Scandinavian-type fermented sausages. International Journal of Food Microbiology, 105(3), 419-431.

Mehler, N. (2011). From self-sufficiency to external supply and famine: foodstuffs, their preparation and storage in Iceland. In Food in the Medieval Rural Environment: Processing, Storage, Distribution of Food (pp. 173-186).

Richter, S., & Eliasson, S. T. (2008). Dental health in Viking age Icelanders. Bulletin of the International association for paleodontology, 2(2), 14-20.

Shephard, S. (2006). Pickled, potted, and canned: How the art and science of food preserving changed the world. Simon and Schuster.

Svanberg, I. (2015). Ræstur fiskur: air-dried fermented fish the Faroese way. Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine, 11(1), 76.

Wicklund, T. (2016). Utilization of Different Raw Materials from Sheep and Lamb in Norway. In Traditional Foods (pp. 265-270). Springer, Boston, MA.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07104

And read all of this!

Ruralia, V. I. I. I. (2009). Processing, Storage, Distribution of Food. Ruralia, 8, 7th-12th.