Daily Living and Pastimes Archives - Vikings of Middle England Blog

One of the most exciting things about ‘Living History’ is exploring the methods of making something using the tools and materials of the people we’re trying to represent. One of the most fulfilling things to do – mainly because it’s yummy – is cooking.

While there’s no surviving written recipes from the early medieval period, we do get information from remains of things like bread, and the cereal that was used to make it. Coupled with the finds of domestic ware like pots and pans, mill stones and threshing tools, we can build a picture, and make our own experiments.

For example, cereal husks have survived in the archaeological record, so we know that some breads were made of wheat, barley, rye and spelt, and some from pulses (peas and beans) mixed with oat flour. Bread has been found in the Viking world, such as in burials at Birka, Sweden. There’s a small biscuit-like bread full of protein that was found in a cremation burial in Jämtland, Sweden, and may have been mixed with blood (the protein) to make something akin to black-pudding.

Various kernals of cereal in a container - wheat, oats, barley etc. — *Ceral husks before the kernels are harvested and ground into flour.*

Some breads were leavened (like modern fluffy bread that rises), but probably using a sourdough starter as domestically grown yeast hadn’t yet been adopted. Sourdough is made from a culture of flour, water, and wild yeast that lives on the flour or is blown around by the wind in the environment.

Leavened breads would require a large clay bread-oven to get an even heat for the loaf to raise. Ovens such as these are passively described in an 8th Century biography of the abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow called the Life of Ceolfrith.

Much simpler is a flat bread, or cake – kaka in Old Norse, and what Old English speakers would call cycel (pronounced ‘kytchel’) which is where we get the word ‘cake’ and ‘kitchen.’ It’s suggested in Sally Crawford’s Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England that these can be cooked on hot stones, the hot ash of a fire, or on a frying pan or skillet.

For our experiment, we used wheat, which needed to be ground into flour. There’s evidence of small hand-turned quern stones throughout the early medieval world, which suggests that grinding flour was a part of the daily routine of bread-making.

A rotary quern stone used for grinding grain into flour. — A small rotary quern that we used to grind the flour.

One thing to note here is that reproducing historical food is often full of ‘ifs.’ While we know certain ingredients existed, they certainly weren’t distributed evenly – it’s not like they could pop to Tesco. Without modern techniques, farmers in the north of England would have a tough time growing wheat, whereas the south has the perfect soil and weather conditions for that crop. People in areas of poor soil, or urban areas might make flour from garden crops such as beans and peas, or oats. Trading towns may have had access to a larger variety of grains with which to make bread, as well as ingredients to add to it. Contaminants might also be a factor in geography. There’s a fair bit of evidence that weeds such as corncockle got into the flour, so there may well have been plenty of upset tummies! So, with that in mind, ‘if they had access to wheat, they may have made…’

Viking Flat Bread – The Recipe

flour being sprinkled on dough while making viking flat bread.

hands kneeding dough made from flour and water to make viking flat bread

Start with flour and add a little water until you form a dough that isn’t super sticky. If you over do it, add more flour. Water is a interesting resource here – there’s plenty of myths surrounding potable water (that is, water that is safe to drink). Water precured from flowing streams or rivers that aren’t downstream from waste or latrines would be fine to use in cooking. Salt water could potentially be used to flavour the dough (there’s an experiment!)

Knead the dough until everything is mixed and you can form it into cakes. If you are cooking on an open fire, let it burn down to the embers – you don’t want ash and grit in your bread.

Viking flat breads being cooking in a large iron pan over an open fire.

Use an iron pan or skillet. The pan is dry – not oiled – put it on the fire for a few minutes to warm up, then place to one side. The pan can’t be too hot else you’ll burn them or have them fire-welded onto the pan!

Pans like the one pictured have been found at Winchester and York (or bits of them anyway), but there’s loads of flat skillet-type pans from around the Viking world. The above isn’t too dissimilar from a wok.

The flatbreads take a couple of minutes on each side. Enjoy with butter, cheese, or salt. The Saxon Forager has a gorgeous recipe with oats and butter.

A freshly cooked viking flat bread on the end of a spatular. — Enjoy!

Banham, D. Faith, R. (2014). Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming.
Crawford, S (2009). Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England. p101-107
Hansson, A. (2002). Pre- and protohistoric bread in Sweden: a definition and a review. In Civilisations Vol 49.
Karg, S. (2007). Food: The Rest of Europe in Graham-Campbell, J. Valor, M eds (2007) The Archaeology of Medieval Europe Vol. 1.
Serra, D. (2013). An Early Meal-A Viking Age Cookbook & Culinary Odyssey.

This is the first in a series looking a Viking-Age board games.

Hnefatafl is classified as a war game by board game scholars. There are many variants of hnefatafl, which often fall under the category of ‘tafl’ games. Hnefatafl is a game that is played with unequal sides or forces: the smaller force (the defenders) has a king piece whose aim is to escape to a corner square of the lattice board. The larger forces (attackers) task is to capture the king to stop it from escaping. The rules were not written down contemporarily with the origins of the game, however this it is most likely Hnefatafl was played in its most basic rule set in Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland. Early 20th Century scholar Harold Murray recognised a game recorded by 18th Century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus called tablut as a ‘tafl’ game.

Carl Linnaeus's drawing of Tablut, a variant of Hnefatafl played by the Sami in the 18th Century. — *Linnaeus’s drawing of tablut* (1811)

Linnaeus noted tablut in his diary in July 1732 during a tour of Lapland, he commented that it superficially resembled chess, played on a board of 9×9 cells with two forces: the white or Swedish with eight defenders and a king piece, and the dark opposing side or Muscovites with sixteen attackers. The aims are as described above, each piece moves the same, orthogonally, and all are captured by being sandwiched between two opposing pieces in the same row or column.

It is not disputed by academics that tablut is hnefatafl because it matches both archaeological and literary evidence. The Norse sagas give references to playing board games, but most do not describe the rules as this was not the purpose of the story, it was assumed people knew the rules already. If a character in a story written today is playing chess the rules are not described because the assumption is made that the reader knows how to play.

Hervarar saga contains two riddles that relate to gaming. The riddle goes :

‘Who are the maidens who fight around their defenceless lord? The darker ones defend all the time, the fairer ones advance’.

The second riddle goes:

‘What is that beast all girdled with iron which kills the flocks? It has eight horns but no head’

The first riddle’s answer is hnefatafl, the second answer is the hnefi (the king piece is often referred to at the hnefi, although it means ‘fist’ in old Norse). These riddles share elements of the tablut game described by Linnaeus with two sides, one involving a king piece, one side attacks and the other defends. Fridthjof’s Saga gives reference to a double-attack being possible, which supports tablut, as a double attack suggests to surround a piece on two sides to take it out of the game. The archaeological finds of gaming pieces particularly from Scandinavia support Murrays claim as elaborate hnefi pieces are found alongside game pieces that are designed for uneven sides.

For example the image below shows the game pieces from Birka grave 523 has one anthropomorphic king piece, fourteen decorated with spirals and five plain dark glass.

Blue glass gaming pieces, possible used for Hnefatafl, including anthropomorphic king piece discovered in Birka grave 523.

There are numerous lead gaming pieces from the Viking winter camps in Lincolnshire, along with copper alloy pieces in a similar style. Glass gaming pieces from Lindesfarne, Northumberland and Dundurn Hill Fort in Scotland have similar qualities, suggesting a wide distribution of fashion.

hnefatafl board with a mix of similar pieces but in different materials - glass, copper-alloy and lead.

There is evidence for different sized variations of hnefatafl throughout Britain and Ireland. In Ireland the Gaelic terms Brandubh and Fidcheall are mentioned. Brandubh means black raven and could signify the shape of the king piece, although no archaeological evidence supports this so far. Fidcheall means ‘wood sense’ and could be the equivalent to the term for table being used as the name of the game in old English. The old Irish poem Scela Cano mac Gartnain tells of King Cano and his retinue sailing to Ireland in AD 668 with ‘fifty well armed warriors, fifty well-dressed ladies and fifty liveried gillies each with the silver leads of two greyhounds in his right hand, a musical instrument in his left and a fidcheall board on his back along with the silver and gold playing men.’

The Ballinderry board found in Ballinderry, Co. Westmeath, Ireland in 1932, supports this. It was found broken in two parts 8ft apart and has been dated to the 10^th century. What is interesting about this board is that it is built with the intention to be travelled with. It is a pegged board so the pieces stay in place when played on a rocking boat or carriage. It also has two decorated projecting heads, one human one animal that can be used as handles on unstable terrain. Both fidcheall and brandubh are listed in Irish laws of the 7^th and 8^th centuries.

Gaming board found in at Ballinderry, Ireland — *The Ballinderry board*

The game tawlbwrdd occurs frequently in ancient laws of Wales, however, it was not described until 1587 by Robert ap Ifan. He provides a drawing of an 11×11 board and includes a description of the rules that are very similar to Linnaeus’ tablut. Ifan, includes extra rules, including moving one of your pieces between two of the oppositions pieces and not being captured, you have to say ‘I am your liegeman’ for your piece to safely move into that space though!

Tawlbwrdd means throw board and could suggest the use of dice with the game, however there is limited evidence of dice in conjunction with a ‘tafl’ game. One example was found at Keythorpe Hall in Leicestershire where two dice were excavated with forty-six bone playing pieces. The majority of gaming sets that could be a ‘tafl’ game include no dice. This does not mean dice were not used as there have been games known to use dice that have been found archaeologically missing their dice, such as the Gloucester Tables Set, a late 11^th century backgammon board.

The etymology of the name tawlbwrdd may possibly answer the question about dice. Tawlbwrdd is possibly a misunderstanding for the name of the original game by borrowing and confusing taefl in old English and tafl in old Norse meaning board with the welsh tawl. Thus making tawlbwrdd mean board-board and therefore not indicating the use of dice within the game. Ifan’s account supports this, he states that when a piece is captured it is thrown from the board ‘ai daflu or gwarau’ [and he is thrown from the game]. Taflu is the lenited or softening form of daflu .

Replica bone dice — Reproduction bone 6-sided dice with ring-and-dot scoring decoration

The Anglo-Saxon evidence for ‘tafl’ games comes from an Irish gospel manuscript of the 11th century and can be seen below. It is played on an 18×18 lattice board with forty-eight attackers and twenty-four defenders and is called alea evangelii or ‘game of gospels.’ It was known in English court during the reign of Athelstan AD 925-39. Here the game has taken on Christian symbolism: there are seventy-two men because the number of items in the harmony is seventy-two and it is played on an 18×18 board because, four evangelists, four gospels and ten canons equals eighteen.

alea evangelii as it appears in corpus christi manuscript — Corpus Christi College Manuscript 122

The earliest date for hnefatafl is from evidence of the 5^th century AD board fragment found in a grave from Wimose, Denmark. Murray states that it was played by Scandinavian people from 400 AD and brought by the Norsemen to Iceland, Britain and Ireland, where it then spread to Wales. However, there is limited evidence of hnefatafl being played earlier. This evidence is that of conical playing pieces that were not used in the Roman period except for one exception, dating from 1^st to 4^th centuries AD found amongst an assemblage of Roman gaming pieces in Spain. An excavation at Cnip has a conical piece that dates from first century BC to the first century AD. Pieces from the Shetland isles have also been found, however, because they are all pre-Viking in date (before 6^th century) a hnefatafl identification has been avoided.

Category: Daily Living and Pastimes

Making Early Medieval Flat Bread

Viking Flat Bread – The Recipe

Further Reading

Early Medieval Board Games: Hnefatafl

Further Reading about Hnefatafl