Funny fact.

[Bergtorp]

I don't know if this is just something new for me, but I'm doing some research for a novel with some norse mythology in it.

And I found that an other name for vikings and people living in Skandinavia during the viking era was "rus".

You gotta love it.

[Bongfu]

I don't know if this is just something new for me, but I'm doing some research for a novel with some norse mythology in it.

And I found that an other name for vikings and people living in Skandinavia during the viking era was "rus".

You gotta love it.

 

The term Rus doesn't inlcude all the Scandinavian people. The Rus were a people who raided and colonized the East Baltic, most notably the lands around modern day Kiev, Russia.

 

Russ got his name from them though, if that is what you were implying. Since the Space Wolves and their culture seem to be based off of the travels of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who was an arab scholar traveling north into the Rusland.

[Lord Scytha]

I don't know if this is just something new for me, but I'm doing some research for a novel with some norse mythology in it.

And I found that an other name for vikings and people living in Skandinavia during the viking era was "rus".

You gotta love it.

 

The term Rus doesn't inlcude all the Scandinavian people. The Rus were a people who raided and colonized the East Baltic, most notably the lands around modern day Kiev, Russia.

 

Russ got his name from them though, if that is what you were implying. Since the Space Wolves and their culture seem to be based off of the travels of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who was an arab scholar traveling north into the Rusland.

 

To be even more correct so was Rus the name giving to those "Vikings" who settled in those lands by the people who already lived there. It is assumed to stem from the name Ruser which was Scandinavians living in the area known as Roslagen, though that did not mean the settlers came from only that area but instead people from all of eastern Sweden is likely to have gone Viking and settled in those lands. Sort of how the Vikings pillaging France and England came to be known as Danes even though it included Vikings from from the south of Sweden and Norway too.

 

Interesting to note is that the Finnish word for Sweden is Ruotsi and the Estonian word is Rootsi.

[-Volsung-]

Also read in some books that Vikings, Nordics, and Rus peoples prefered their meats boiled rather than roasted.

 

Elk soup?

[Lord Scytha]

It's kind of hard to say what people preferred to eat a thousand years later. Probably they ate a varied menu of types of cooking like we do now so they probably ate both boiled and roasted meats. The only thing known for sure is that in a few of the sagas they mention boiling meat. But that doesn't mean it was something they preferred to other ways to cook.

[ElDude]

As Ahmad ibn Fadlan has been mentioned, I'll add a suggested reading of "Eaters of the Dead" the book which the movie the 13th Warrior was based on. Even though it is a fictional book, it is based in historical fact (the author talked in the afterword that at one point he spent a night looking for a book referenced in a footnote that he had made up, which is how much he had blended fact and fiction lol)and is a whooole heck of alot better then the movie!

[-Volsung-]

It's kind of hard to say what people preferred to eat a thousand years later. Probably they ate a varied menu of types of cooking like we do now so they probably ate both boiled and roasted meats. The only thing known for sure is that in a few of the sagas they mention boiling meat. But that doesn't mean it was something they preferred to other ways to cook.

 

No doubt, no doubt

 

Still... Elk Soup doesn't sound half that bad...

[Lord Scytha]

As Ahmad ibn Fadlan has been mentioned, I'll add a suggested reading of "Eaters of the Dead" the book which the movie the 13th Warrior was based on. Even though it is a fictional book, it is based in historical fact (the author talked in the afterword that at one point he spent a night looking for a book referenced in a footnote that he had made up, which is how much he had blended fact and fiction lol)and is a whooole heck of alot better then the movie!

 

Speaking of ibn Fadlan, who was an real historical person, an ambassador to the lands we now know as Bulgaria for the caliph, q

who did travel up Volga and met these Viking Rus for himself and later wrote a book about his travels.

 

Here is another funny fact that will really spice up the SWs if you add it. Ibn Fadlan complains in his book that the vikings he met stank of garlic because they used such enormous amounts of it to spice up their food.

 

So garlic Elk soup anyone?

 

 

Btw, remember the wolf blades? The emperor of Byzantium had a special body guard consisting of Norse warriors called Väringalidet in Scandinavian or Tagma ton Varangion in Greek . In fact, in the mosque Hagia Sofia in Istanbul (then Constantinople) you can still see graffiti in Norse runes made by members of that guard.

[-Volsung-]

Hmmm... Clay Pot of Garlic Elk Soup! Should be a new wargear item

 

Guess it also comes in handy against those vampie blood angels. Just toss a bowl in their face if they're talking s%@! ;)

[Stormshadow]

Haha, :cuss

 

There is a lot of “Elk” going around this forum. But I think it was a lot more common for us Vikings to live on pork or boar back in the day. I’ve heard that the main diet consisted of bread, eggs, porridge and pork.

[Cate]

The big game animals was probably not very common food for the coastal people living around the Baltic sea, Norway and Iceland, hunting large animals who are very reluctant to be close to humans are kind of hard to catch and move around. Look at the geography of that area and you see what I mean. Norway is more or less a long coastal strip, Iceland is an island, Denmark is a couple of islands with one larger piece of landmass, this area was used for agriculture, but had some larger areas of forests. Sweden which during this period was not a country, but rather some larger settlements around the coasts. The forests of Sweden where thick and more or less impossible to travel through, it took a couple of hundred years after the Vikings had become Christians before Sweden took the southern tip of modern Sweden and claimed it as Swedish.

The Vikings mostly ate fish and pork when it came to meat, they hunted seals for the fat and the skins. Sure they ate elk, deer and boar but that was more for feasts, but when travelling the food was dried fish or dried meat, if it had been a good hunting year, used in stews with beats, wild onions and mushrooms. Beef was not something Vikings ate as the cows where used as either farm animals or for the milk, for cheese and butter. Their bread was made from rye, sometimes mixed with bark and un-yeasted.

 

Remember that the Viking settlements where not that large, a large settlement had maybe 800-1000 people in them, 60-70% of them where females, children, slaves (thralls), feeble and old. Some males where merchants or specialist craftmen, lets say 2-3%, they had a leader and his closest men about 5%. So we have something like 30% of the male population who are doing loads of stuff, cutting down trees, building boats, houses, fish, hunt seals, beaver and otters, creating nets, butchering animals for food, skinning, working in the fields crafting various stuff that is needed in the daily life. Then during spring and summer they travelled either as merchants or plunderers.

 

So what I want to say is that the Vikings had problems hunting big games both from a geographic point of view and that they had to catch the easiest prey they had around, fish. Elk, deer and boar was part of their food but not as much as maybe they have been portrayed to have. It was probably dried so they could bring it on their travels except the best parts which was feasted on.

 

The Space wolves probably eat the same paste or processed stuff as the other more stiff and uptight chapters daily, but when they feast they eat real meat, and I have a feeling that they feast more than the other chapters.

 

I am basing the historical facts from when I studied medieval history of Stockholm. We can be sure that the Vikings ate extremely more meat and fish compared to what the citizen of Stockholm ate in the 13th-14th century as they did not need to fast for 180 days a year, but otherwise they probably ate very similar.

 

 

/C

[-Volsung-]

Garlic Fish Soup With Pork Meatballs And Chunks of Elk Jerky Floating in It

[Cate]

yummy! B)

[Lord Scytha]

The Space wolves probably eat the same paste or processed stuff as the other more stiff and uptight chapters daily, but when they feast they eat real meat with garlic, and I have a feeling that they feast more than the other chapters.

 

/C

 

Fixed that for you. B)

[-Volsung-]

Oh, and served cold at that....

 

ewwwwwww haha B)