The early day Scandinavian adventurers, the Vikings, prepared food without cookbooks. For years, recipes were handed down by word of mouth, like folk ballads. The Viking diet consisted of simple foods; many of the basic foods required no cooking--cheeses, salted meat, and dried raw fish, eaten smeared with butter. The staples of the Viking's diet, still used today by their descendants, were oysters, mussels, mutton, cheese, cabbage, apples, onions, berries, poultry, beets, potatoes, cucumbers, dill, parsley, horseradish, and nuts.

During the "Viking Age", from 790 A.D. until the middle of the eleventh century, historians have discovered that foods were cooked in pots or cauldrons which hung by chains over the open fire. Meat was roasted on a spit or baked in a deep pit filled with earth. Some houses used a stone oven partly built into a wall.

Food was served in wooden cauls and dishes and eaten with spoons, knives, and fingers (forks were unknown at this time).

A modern Scandinavian custom, the smorgasbord, began in Sweden in the 1880's. Traditionally, it consists of cold dishes at one end of the table, hot dishes at the other end and in between a group of salads, cold cuts, and meats. The word for this feast has come to mean a meal with a number of dishes served buffet-style.

The recipes in this book will surely provide the basis for a tempting smorgasbord from modern Vikings.