Brute Norse Podcast Ep. 18: Beer in Norse Culture Pt. 2 - "Baptized in beer"

The saga continues with an exploration of the vocabulary, material culture, and social status of beer in Iron Age and Medieval Scandinavia. We look at different terms for beer in the Old Norse language and discern their differences, from Old Norse ǫl, mungát, and bjórr to modern ale and beer, with an intimate look at the "Nordic grog" of Scandinavian prehistory, before we venture up to the many festivities of Nordic peasants up until the bacchanalian festivals of Medieval guilds.

Also more or less mentioned:
- Household sacrifices
- Ale runes
- Yeast necromancy
- The drunken Germanic war machine
- No pets in the guild hall

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patreon.com/brutenorse
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Brute Norse Podcast Ep. 17: Beer in Norse Culture Pt. 1 - "Not all ales are alike"

Once again the time is here for a new episode of the Brute Norse podcast!

In this two-parter, join Eirik for an invigorating dip into the crooked creek that is the history of beer and brewing in Iron Age and Medieval Scandinavia, with some serious side-eye to the later Nordic farmhouse brewing tradition. In this episode we will cover what exactly beer is, and what separates the global industrial brewery from its historical household counterpart. Cheers!

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Fascinated by farmhouse ale? Check out Lars Marius Garshol’s blog here.

Moltke Moe's "Rejuvenation Tonic" - An Invigorating Mulled Tobacco Beer That Will Absolutely Kill You

Let’s start with a flippin’ disclaimer: I do not recommend that anybody follow the recipe stated in this article. Nicotine is hazardous and any unorthodox method of administration should be carried out with caution. I take no responsibility for any dim ideas that might arise from this article.

Now, is this a trip report or a review? I honestly don’t know. Nothing makes sense anymore. Beer and liquor and smokes are suddenly all the same. There is no separation, no up nor down. Today I question all my life’s decisions that led me down this path of sin and misery.

But first of all, let me explain: It was way back Brute Norse’s infancy, when I went by the name Tulen and ran myself off the bend doing Norse related Q&As, that my old friend Rudi Endresen challenged me to recreate a beverage described by the Norwegian folklorist Moltke Moe, the lesser known (but still brilliant) son of the legendary compiler of fairy tales Jørgen Moe, on an expedition to Bø in Telemark. A bizarre concoction consisting of beer, spirits, and tobacco, intended to grease the throats of his sources. The tale was recounted by Knut Liestøl in his biography of Moe the younger, and in Norwegian it goes like this:

Ein gong ville han få til et lag sjølv. Han hadde høyrt av gamlingane i Bø at i ungdomen sin hadde dei hatt så svær ein oppkveikingsdrykk. Det var øl og brennevin saman, som vart oppvermt og hatt litegrand tobakk i. Så kom Moe på at dersom han no laga ein slik drykk til dei og fekk dei saman, så ville minnet friskna og tungebandet losna, og han ville få høyra mykje gamalt som dei elles ikkje kom i hug. Ja, laget kom i stand, og drykken var der, og stemninga steig fort i taket. Men det vart ein fiasko, for gamlingane tolde ikkje retteleg den drykken dei hadde hadd slik glede av i ungdomen. Dei sovna om eit lite bel, og noko gamalt fekk han ikkje.

Now in English, my emphasis added:

One time he wanted to organize an assembly himself. He had heard from the old folks in Bø that in their youth, they used to have this great rejuvenation drink. This was beer and liquor together, which was heated with a small bit of tobacco added. Moe had this idea that if he could make such a drink for them and get them all together, then their memory would be refreshed and their tongues loosened, and he would hear lots of old things they otherwise failed to remember. Indeed, the assembly happened and the drink was there, and the mood grew quickly intense. But it was a fiasco, because the old people no longer tolerated as well the drink they had enjoyed so much in their youth. They fell asleep soon after, and nothing old was gained for him.

And so I set out to recreate this particular little crap nugget from the cozy outhouse of Norwegian folk culture. Screw all that wine after beer nonsense.

The Grim Reaper (or is it Kittelsen’s “Pesta”?) entertains Moltke Moe with fairytales, in Bø, Telemark. The scene of the crime.

A translation rarely flows well when it’s literal. The same principle applies to reconstructing Moltke Moe’s mnemonic elixir, as the specifics elude us. I haven’t got a clue whether he used local farmhouse beer or some commercial alternative, or from whence he sourced his liquor, so rather than giving in to speculation I decided it was best to opt for a solution based on somewhat common ingredients, for eased consumption and guzzability (?).

In the former incarnation of this recipe I used rolling tobacco, which was convenient. I believe I only used a pinch last time around — admittedly a path I should never have strayed from — but my concept of measurement when it comes to tobacco is shaky. I’m no smoking man and I don’t know a living soul on this side of the Atlantic, so I resorted to bum an American Spirit from a co-worker. As for the remaining ingredients I went for a malt-forward Belgian dubbel and a standard Norwegian aquavit. I threw the ingredients in a pot and heated them to right below boiling temperature, then transferred the concoction into a coffee press to separate the solids. In yonder past, tobaccer was a relatively expensive luxury. You seen the size of clay pipes and whatnot? People smoked a small pinch at a time. Had this moment of historical clarity come to me sooner, I would have severely cut down on the tobacco content. But this is a modernized recipe, and what is more modern than short-sighted, wholesale idiocy?

Drunk warm, it was immediately clear that liquor and beer alone would make for a tasty winter warmer, and slowly other effects began to manifest as well. It didn’t take long before I started feeling excited and spirited, courtesy of the double buzz of alcohol and the unfamiliar nicotine rush. Alert like a motherfucker! I listened to some devilish fiddle jigs and rocked back and forth as I punched the air. In my dipsomania they flashed before my mind’s eye; the infamous brawls of peasant dances past. It all made sense now. I felt like kicking hats off long sticks and brandishing knives, to do ill deeds, throw rocks in the ocean and strike bargains with the devil.

I hear you, brother

That all sounds cool and all, but it went downhill fast from there. This was the point of no return. I recall similar, albeit weaker effects at the time of the first reconstruction several years back, but this time I was flying way too close to the sun. I began to sweat profusely. One whole cig per tankard was obviously too much. My nicotine extraction method was too efficient for my own good.

My innards loosener from their place and began to wander my wretched body. For the sake of the article I’m pretending this all happened in the past, but this is happening at the time of writing. Or should I say times of writing, because I had to take multiple breaks to finish this short piece. First to pace around the room, but nausea forced me back on my ass. This is a nonlinear article. The sickness encroached upon me like a bridge troll, and I ended up vomiting multiple times before finally crawling to bed, where I took an hour long nap before I returned to finish this mess of a review. I found the half-full (!) tankard mocking me from the corner of the table, so I poured the fucker out. I’ll let you believe that parts of this very text was written with my left hand as my right hand kept the toilet seat from dunking my head into the bowl. Did I damn near assassinate myself for the sake of immersive anthropology? True to the original account this was a total fiasco, and now, several hours later, I still feel like shit.

So to sum things up: So basically Moltke Moe (1859-1913) was a Norwegian folklorist who once got a bunch of old folks so drunk they passed out by lacing their beer with liquor and tobacco. It was a disaster then, and it was a disaster now. Would I do it again? A nice mulled beer I would not mind, but leave the nicotine out of it.

Recipe: Moltke Moe’s “rejuvenation tonic“ à la Brute Norse aka. Scandinavian ayahuasca

• 0.33 l of dark Belgian abbey ale (8% alcohol)

• 4 cl of Norwegian aquavit (40% alcohol)

• 1 cigarette, but maybe just one third of this if you are sane
  
  1. Unroll cigarette, mix all ingredients in a suitably sized pot.
  2. Heat slowly on a stove top, do not boil.
  3. Transfer concoction to a coffee press, or pour it through a tea strainer to filter out the tobacco.
  4. Serve in a solid mug or tankard, then pour it straight down the drain. Or, if you are prone to self-harm, drink slowly while it’s still warm.
  
  Pair with warm sheets in a well ventilated room, or some devilish Nordic jams.

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Related reading:

From Bog Myrtle to Hops: Ethnobotanical fragments from the history of Nordic beer brewing

Dance, Trance, and Devil Pacts: The Fiddler in Norwegian Folk Mysticism

From Bog Myrtle to Hops: Ethnobotanical fragments from the history of Nordic beer brewing

Jag haver så ont i huvud,
jag gitter ej lemman rört,
jag haver druckit det starke porsöl,
som är ifrån Dalarna fört.

I’ve such a pain my head,
I can’t bother the limbs to move,
I’ve drunk the strong bog myrtle ale
that the Dalecarlians brew.

— Gustav Vasa och dalkarlarna, Swedish folk song

If you’ve ever walked a crooked mile along the beaches and lakes of Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the Baltic, and found that the air around you seemed saturated with a peculiar spiced, gassy herbal fragrance, then chances are you’ve had the joy of stumbling across the myrica gale, a green leafed shrub that thrives in wet, sandy, and acidic soils along the shores and marshes of Northern Europe.

Many know it by one of its English names, bog myrtle or sweet gale, while Scandinavians tend to know it by some variant of the same name as the vikings knew it, which was pors. Bog myrtle has a number of wonderful uses. Not only has it lent its sweet and distinct bitter flavor to distilled spirits for centuries, it was a common sight in the farmer’s brewing kettle for millennia before that. It is among the oldest documented additives of European prehistoric beer brewing, and is widely assumed to have been the most popular flavoring agent in beer before hops rose to prominence in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. It has antiseptic properties, and apparently works as a repellent against mosquitoes, moths, and other pests. It is useful for plant dyeing, where it leaves a wonderful shade of yellow. It makes a bitter tea, and a wonderful scent when used as incense. A sprig can be used much like a bay leaf, and a pinch of leaves works well in gravy and game stew.

I used to have a nice little bog myrtle patch right below my house. People might often see me stalking the marsh in the morning dew of the early summer, cutting myrtle by the shrub, sometimes rubbing leaves in my face when the gnats got too nosy, huffing its gaseous bouquet as I went. On infrequent, but usually spontaneous nature hikes I would make it my express goal to seek out places where the bog myrtle might grow. Finding a new “porsbrot” (Old Norse, “bog myrtle foraging spot” - literally “bog myrtle quarry”) was always a great delight.

My enthusiasm for this plant is so unbridled that I had to downsize my foraging not to de-shrub that patch beneath my house. Hurt by past losses I always tried to forage from different sites, ever since vandals from a local charity razed my oldest foraging spot to make room for an eyesore of a gazebo. Apparently to facilitate public access to “nature experiences” as Norwegians like to call their glorified dog walks. Luckily it’s so abundant that irreverence and ignorance are its main concern. That does not hurt the bog myrtle, but the many who pass it by without realizing the ancient treasure it represents. Many are unaware, some keep their distance. It remains a dangerous outlaw of a plant among some individuals. Not because it’s a weed, either. It is in fact very picky about its turf, wild and resistant to domestication.

Jeg vandrer opad den mosgrå stenvei
Hvor veien slutter, begynder lyngen.
Og her gror brisken, og her dufter porsen.
Her hører jeg til, og her har jeg hjemme,
og hjertet blir stille som sundet mod kveld.

Og intetsteds længes mit sind tilbage,
og intet menneske her jeg savner."

I wander along the moss grey stone path.

Where way ends begins the heather,
and here grows the juniper, and whiffs the sweet gale.
Here I belong, and here is my home,
the heart grows silent as the strait at dusk.



And nowhere does my mind yearn back,
and no person here do I miss.

— Vilhelm Krag, Yachten. Sange fra min ø (1918).

Under various vernacular names, myrica gale was the king of beer additives Northern European prehistory up until at least the middle ages, and in certain areas much later. It has fallen quite from grace during the past couple of hundred years until it vanished more or less completely in recent generations. Today, bog myrtle is a rather obscure plant used only by a small niche of revivalists paying homage to Northern Europe’s brewing heritage, but was often actively avoided in the near past. Mysteriously, it also attracted a low key cult following within Scandinavia’s peasantry, probably for the exact same reasons as others shunned it. But the rise and fall of bog myrtle is a long winded saga that cannot be explained in absence of a multitude of other factors. In a way, the demise of bog myrtle is found in the foundations of the modern beer industry itself.

Bog myrtle is subject to a widely held belief that the plant is dangerous to one’s health. The claims and superstitions range from it being mildly narcotic, to being an abortifacient, outright poisonous herb that spews deadly fumes that are prone to kill any man who strays too far into its territory. True, the sweet scent of myrica gale makes my heart race, my mouth water, my pupils dilate, my feet stumble, and my loins swell, though I am sad to report that none of this is to be blamed on some narcotic high, but my enthusiasm, nostrils and taste buds, alone.

Beyond its reputation as the crystal meth of the old Norwegian peasantry, another common myth holds that those who drink bog myrtle beer suffer hangovers most severe, inhumane even. I will not deny that I have suffered gruesome, crippling, day-long ailments after drinking bog myrtle beer and mead, but no more than other homebrew projects of diverse quality and unreasonable quantity (My first homebrew was some sort of cauliflower-based kilju, so I’ll use this opportunity to appeal to authority). All evidence to the contrary are purely anecdotal, and several scientific studies have failed to identify anything fishy about the chemical composition of the plant. History will vindicate it! Suspicion sticks, though, and notions about its toxicity have arguably made the plant a bigger novelty than it otherwise would have been. Hence, some scholars who ought to know better still reproduce the same unproven narrative about myrica gale, which serves to exhaggerate the unwise ways and habits of our less civilized, pre-urban ancestors.

Beer bowl displaying some of the dualities of drinking culture. Photo: Norsk Folkemuseum

Like a shared meal, drinking culture is partially about establishing and confirming who is in and who is out. The loss of self-control and inhibitions that come with intoxication also reveals something about our character we don’t always express, whether by accident or design. Drinking often forms a cornerstone of initiations, diplomacy, bonding exercises, weddings, business deals, and sundry rites and ceremonies across the ages. Drinking reveals, in a sense, who we really are. A lot of the stigmas and problems attached to drinking in the modern world can be traced back to the idea that drinking is only about fun and revelry, recreation, or rather the loss of one half of the culture and concept that was very much respected in the past; namely that drinking was serious business.

In Brewing and Beer Traditions in Norway (1969), Odd Nordland provides ample examples of how the old and new beer culture clashed with one another, and how the ritual and solemnity of beer drinking perished with the demise of local farmhouse brewing. In the past, to be buried without proper beer for the funeral feast was considered a shame, to the point where some farmers even oversaw the malt production from their death bed to ensure they would at least leave behind the legacy of a good funeral beer. Burials were even postponed until the funeral beer was ready. It was natural to brew beer for any monumental or important occasion. Lighter beer for work, strong beer for the big occasions, whether to celebrate the birth of a new family member, or mourn the death of a loved one. But around 1900 or so, these ideas and practices were already starting to get marginalized, and eventually the concept of the funeral beer itself became absurd in the eyes of people now attuned to think of beer in terms of recreation, sensory gratification, and even sin (Nordland 1969: 9-13).

But the the who, what, and whens of drinking go far beyond the rural Norway’s ghost of brewing past. The Romans scoffed at the drinking customs of so-called barbarians, and ancient Germanic societies developed complex social hierarchies glued together by the prestige of parties where extravagant and expensive beverages flowed. Before the rise of microbreweries, beer drinking wallowed in the gutters below the ivory towers of “wine culture”, and in many cases still does. English ale drinkers superstitiously believe that lagers turn men into monsters, and I’ve personally witnessed a Cambridge bartender who refused to serve snake-bites to women, specifically for the same reason. As we will see, similar sentiments also came to influence the consumption of bog myrtle beer.

In the past there was never really a standardized method of beer brewing as there is in the modern industrial brewery, which conforms to a completely different set of standards and philosophies. There were some recurring tools and implements, and a general outline of the grand process, but on a more specific level, people repeated time tested techniques and customs they had observed since childhood, handed down through generations.

An overlooked factor of traditional, rural cultures is that they are often suspicious and intolerant of changes that challenge their identity and ways. While it is true that all is flowing in the world of culture, the river seems to flow a lot slower beyond the reaches of urban centers. The farmers of Norway held conformity in high regard, but brewing beer provided an opportunity for self-assertion. Brewing good, strong beer according to the traditions and expectations of their village, was a great source of pride among farmers. Until the village doctor became a common feature of the Norwegian countryside, peasants were still drinking from communal feasting vessels as they did in the Bronze Age, though technological, cultural, and economic factors changed the style and contents of the beer bowl. Farmers looked on practices that deviated from their own with suspicion, and often didn’t consider the malted slop of neighboring areas to be “true beer” at all. When beer was served it was important to judge or praise it as the context demanded. Many did not even boil their wort (so-called “raw ale”), and disbelieved the proven and honored techniques of other areas where they might instead pour boiling water straight on the malt. But both often drank their beer so fresh that it was still fizzing and foaming at the table! Horror stories both, at least to the ears of the modern brewer, with his temperature controlled equipment, chemical sanitizers, and lab engineered yeast. These are techniques that go against conventional brewing wisdom one way or another, not least the myth that beer is safe to drink because it demanded that water was boiled, which isn’t true: Many people fermented their beer unboiled, which might have been the case throughout much of Scandinavian prehistory as well. Mashing itself effectively sterilizes beer, which is keeps due to alcoholic fermentation and PH value.

Three marinated men, one beer bowl. Photo: Hardanger og Voss Museum

A history of hops in Scandinavia

In the following paragraphs, we will try to make sense of how a once obscure herb came to run botanical beers into extinction through a combinations of economic factors, health scares, and social stigma. Beer without humulus lupulus, or hops, remains unthinkable to most people currently alive. Yet, that would have been the norm in many beer guzzling parts of the world until just a few hundred years ago. You can thank the slimy tendrils of the 16th century Bavarian reinheitsgebot (“purity law”) for that, which is the totalitarian ideology that confines beer to the narrow definition of “water, malt, hops (and yeast)”. I have no issue with such beer per se. It is fascinating how much variation you can achieve from those four ingredients alone. But it’s plain to see that the purity law was the very detonator behind the implosion of certain native brewing practices not only in Scandinavia, but across the globe.

At the peak of the Roman Era, hops are virtually unseen in the archaeological record across the European continent. At this time, hops were likely picked in the wild, and there is no mention or evidence tying it to beer or any other fermented beverage. This apparently changed in the Early Middle Ages, with evidence of hop cultivation in Bavaria from the mid 9th century onward, which soon spread to France, and notable intensification of hop cultivation in the 11th century. It seems exceedingly likely that this was, at least in part, due to a new trend among continental brewers.

There are other possible explanations, though, and initially it seems that hopped beer was a curiosity confined to certain regions and areas of Europe where myrica gale wasn’t available (cf. Behre 1999). Beer was probably an afterthought from its primary use in cooking and medicine, apparently hop shoots can be eaten like asparagus. Another possibility is its use in cordage and textile production. It has been suggested that monasteries, which dabbled in the production of all sorts of alcoholic beverages, experimented with several kinds of herbs before finally popularizing hops as a beer additive (Nelson 2005: 105). While beer was traditionally drunk fresh in the farmhouse brewing tradition, the addition of hops would have increased the beer’s shelf life, which in turn must have revolutionized beer as a traded commodity.

Trace amounts of hops have been identified in several Scandinavian central places as early as the Viking Era. This includes Kaupang, Birka, Ribe, and Hedeby (Behre 1999: 40; Nelson 2005: 107). Given the apparent obscurity of hopped beer even on the continent at the time, it may seem far-fetched that Scandinavians used it for brewing. Lacking evidence for cultivation, the hops may have been imported. Though it is not immediately clear whether Scandinavia has indigenous, ancient hop varietals, or if the hops currently found in the Scandinavian wild are descended from imported rhizomes from the Middle Ages and later. It doesn’t make it easier that hop pollen is hard to differentiate in archaeobotanical contexts from its famous relative, cannabis sativa (hemp) which was certainly used for textiles since at least the 3rd century onward, making pollen analysis difficult. Hops must have been a common sight in medieval monastic yards, as well as the ornamental gardens of Baroque era estates. Halfway a useful herb, halfway garden ornament, hops eventually grew to become a taxable commodity, and official decrees to intensify hop cultivation in the 17th century indicate that hopped beer was certainly commonplace by then, though the same text reveal that there were still significant gaps in the emerging “hop curtain” where older, traditional beer additives were still preferred.

The very first mention of humli, or hops, in any Old Norse text comes from the Frostaþingslǫg, a Medieval Norwegian law code with Viking Era origins, establishing set fines for hop theft. This is often taken as evidence for Viking Era hop cultivation, and among those who have put this argument forward is the Norwegian pharmacist Frederik Grøn, who attempted to contrast hops against bog myrtle, its most obvious competitor (at least retrospectively), in his book Om kostholdet i Norge indtil 1500 (“On the Norwegian Diet until 1500”) in 1927. There he argues with some futility that hopped beer was an ancient Scandinavian product, and even stakes the claim that it predates the use of bog myrtle in Norwegian brewing. His argument is based on the idea that Snorri Sturlusson attributes the code to king Hákon the good, who ruled in the mid 10th century, ignoring that the law in its surviving form dates to 1260 and the rule of Hákon Hákonarson. We can most reasonably assume that this was a Medieval amendment, which gives us a terminus ante quem for Norwegian hop cultivation of the 13th centory or so. Either way, it doesn’t help Grøn’s argument that we have archaeological evidence for bog myrtle in alcoholic beverages as far back as Bronze and Iron Age Denmark, and with new cases of bog myrtle identified in Viking Era brewing sites emerging since he published his book in 1927. To date I am aware of no examples of hops in such a context.

Bog myrtle and malt. Both leaves and cones may be used, but the latter was often preferred. Photo: Eirik Storesund

However, Grøn had some reason to be suspicious, given that the literary sources don’t exactly overflow with references to bog myrtle beer, either. Then again, if bog myrtle was a standard ingredient, initially without much competition, I see no reason why saga authors ought to point out their presence. Besides, bog myrtle doesn’t grow on Iceland, where the majority of our surviving corpus was written. Medieval Icelanders probably didn’t drink much bog myrtle beer at all, and if so, it must have been imported. We know from legal manuscripts that bog myrtle was traded, and from medical manuscripts that is was used medicinally on Iceland.

Thus, most of our sources to the importance of bog myrtle ale in Old Norse texts come from legal documents, and is often indirect. For example, in Norway, bog myrtle beer was subject to protective legislation in the face of German imports, implying that bog myrtle was not only economically important, but possibly seen as a native cultural institution of sorts. Deposits of bog myrtle and malt from Bryggen in Bergen, as well as the medieval arch bishop’s estate in Trondheim dated 1300-1500 indicate that bog myrtle beer was being brewed at these sites with some intensity for generations (Sandvik 2016: 228). Bog myrtle is also mentioned as a general trading item alongside russet, cloth, and hops, the latter certainly implying the presence of local hopped beer as well. Property rent could even be paid in bog myrtle, and farmers who owned marshes where it grew had the same rights to these sites as farmers with coastal properties to fishing waters (Nordland 1969: 216).

While the first Scandinavian meetings with hopped beer were in all likelihood imported, hopped beer isn’t mentioned at all prior to the 14th century, though it had probably been drunk for quite some time before then. The source, the will of a cleric in Stavanger dated 1355, refers to it by the term humlamungát. In medieval law as well as the wider cultural connotations seen in Norse literature, mungát seems to refer to beer brewed in the household, or at the very least domestically. Therefore, it seems fairly certain that the beer in question was a locally brewed product, and that hops had begun to take root among urban Norwegian brewers in the 14th century.

While hopped beer must have been popular on the continent for centuries already, it is not until the aforementioned Bavarian purity law, and similar decrees (before and after) in other German states, that we can conclusively say that humulus lupulus was well on its way towards global domination, beginning with the suppression and extinction of several local German beer styles using herbs and fruit, or even other kinds of grain than malted barley. Olaus Magnus mentions in the 1500’s that the citizens of Bergen drank beer in great quantities, and believed himself that this was partially due to the hop content of foreign import beer, which made it suitable for overseas export (Nordland 1969: 225). This doesn’t really say anything about the extent of hop use in Norwegian brewing, but it may suggest that hoppiness still was a quality associated with foreign beer. This may over time have developed into a preference in favor of hops.

I addressed the likelihood that hopped beer was primarily a phenomenon tied to urban centers and coastal marketplaces. There must have been a great deal of cultural pressure from the south, as several German states continued to enforce limitations on beer brewing in the 16th through 18th centuries, abolishing so-called gruit beers, and making it a criminal offense for brewers to even have bog myrtle in their house (Nordland 1969: 221). This legislation still lives on in the legal definitions of “beer” in some countries, chiefly Germany, and even some American states, which prohibits the sale of non-hopped or herbal beverages under the term “beer”.

In the resulting paradigm shift, herbal ales that had once been ascribed beneficial medical properties, were now entirely outlawed, feared, and despised, with the result that the tradition surrounding them died out in Central Europe. While the same legal pressure was not applied to Scandinavian farmers, this certainly affected the market as well as cultural perceptions about beer and brewing among the elies, as well as commoners living in the cities, which was obviously bound to trickle down into the general populace. In the following centuries, hops gradually took over as the main additive of traditional brewing also in Norway, failing only in certain regions, probably in part due to climatic limitations that yielded hop growing unprofitable, and these regions are well known to have made bog myrtle beer up until modern times (Nordland 1969: 220).

Juniper is another common farmhouse beer additive commonly believed to have ancient origins. There seems to be no evidence for this in pre-modern literary sources, and only scant archaeological evidence. The best argument for archaic and ancient use of juniper in farmhouse brewing is made by pointing to how widespread it is across the Nordic area, and the conservatism of available brewing technology and methods, where juniper twigs were used as filters.

Though bog myrtle had fallen from grace by the 20th century, Nordland attests that the plant was still widely known as a beer additive. Infamous and ill reputed, not everybody was willing to openly disclose whether they used or enjoyed it. This demonstrates a problem with certain ethnological questionnaires: Informants might be reluctant to hand out information that make them seem backwards and unmodern, or have their customs scrutinized as curiosities. Noting a discrepancy in eyewitness accounts versus self-reported accounts from brewers themselves, Nordland speculated that bog myrtle beer was more widely brewed than people were willing to admit as late as the 1960’s.

Hops as ‘war on drugs’

In terms of preservative qualities, bog myrtle simply cannot compete with hops. As far as my own anecdotes have any value, bog myrtle beer does seem to have a shorter shelf life than its hopped counterparts. And while hops are fairly easy to cultivate, the same cannot be said for bog myrtle - though isolated pockets of the plant in otherwise bog myrtle deprived areas have been suggested to stem from prehistoric attempts at domestication. Economically, hops are flat out better suited for a modern, global industry than indigenous, wild botanicals. But these factors alone do not explain the marginalization, and often enough the extinction, of herbal farmhouse ale traditions. While the purity laws of the continent had no direct legal power over Nordic brewing, the impact of the health scares and fashions that arose from them must have affected Scandinavia as well, particularly with the emergence of urban communities, industrialization, and adoption of continental habitus.

The real or imagined chemical properties of these herbs were important the latter stages of hop dominance. While the logistics, agriculture, and economics of hops might have been the backbone, their sole monopoly is better explained by their status as the only legal bittering agent in significant portions of the continent, and especially the properties attributed to bog myrtle and other herbs in this time frame.

While it certainly true that a wide variety of harmful plants have occasionally been used in beer, it seems that the hop plant’s reputation as harmless ingredient had the often intended side-effect of painting native alternatives as outright poisons. This seems to have had the inadvertent effect that many people sought out these plants for their apparent special effects, assuming that these poisons could be harnessed for their narcotic effects. Locally foraged herbs like hypericum, yarrow, and bog myrtle are described in Nordic folk tradition as the ones to look for if you desire a beer to have an extra kick, or, as one informant put it in the context of a wedding beer: “to that the guests become crazy“. Some areas stuck to using bog myrtle for seasonal beers (say, Christmas ales and thirst quenchers for haymaking), but the main motivations for using it were primarily taste, head, and above all potency. Peculiarly, Nordland accounts that bog myrtle beers were often considered too bitter for most people. Considering that the bittering agents of bog myrtle are far milder than most hop varietals (not even considering the alpha acid juggernauts of the modern brewery), at least in my experience, they must have been using a lot of bog myrtle to make it significantly bitter, though traditional ales are generally less bitter than their modern counterparts. High alcohol strength was highly desired, and such beers tend to be more heavy in the residual sugars.

The fact that many of these herbs were rumored to cause terrible hangovers was no deal-breaker, but taken as evidence that these plants had powerful intoxicating properties. In a way, hangovers are obviously associated with the strength of the beverage. As Nordland points out: “Hangover was a good advertisement for the strength of one's ale. As a result, the 'victim' was constantly reminded of the alleged quality of the ale he had drunk. Thus it could be of social importance to produce ale that became noted for its special effects.” Chemical analysis has debunked the notion that bog myrtle contains any harmful or narcotic agents, despite all accounts and reports to the contrary. Whether there is anything in bog myrtle that reacts with alcohol to produce some kind of reaction (like increased hangovers) is a more complicated question, but it seems easier to accept that people, believing they were going to get extraordinarily drunk on bog myrtle ale, drank more bog myrtle ale, and hence got extraordinarily drunk. Of course, hangovers are subjective and tremendously difficult to quantify.

In all matters intoxicating, the placebic power of suggestion shouldn’t be underestimated. Conversely, I have never been convinced that bog myrtle had any special properties beyond pleasant flavor and aroma, and hence I never experienced anything I would describe as out of the ordinary. I have, however, taken a larger dose of bog myrtle extract that resulted in profuse sweating and frequent urination, which is in line with its reputation as a diuretic. Then again, it seems there is hardly a herb that doesn’t do the same when taken in heroic doses.

Whilebelief in the power of bog myrtle might have earned it a cult following, we should also take into account the presence and motivations of local traditionalists who kept it old school, who might genuinely have enjoyed the refreshing taste, and the sweet fragrance of a bog myrtle marsh in the early summer, as I have on many occasions. Cheers!

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Literature

• Behre, Karl-Ernst (1999). A History fo beer additives in Europe - a review. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. Springer-Verlag

• Grøn, Fredrik (1927). OM kostholdet i Norge indtil aar 1500. I kommisjon hos Jacob Dybwad: Oslo

• Nelson, Max (2005). The Barbarian's Beverage - a History of Beer in Ancient Europe. Routledge: London and New York

• Nordland, Odd (1969). Brewing and Beer Traditions in Norway. Universitetsforlaget: Oslo

• Sandvik, Paula Utigard (2006). Frå Nidarosen til Nidarneset: Ein integrert naturvitskapleg - arkeologisk - historisk rekonstruksjon av framveksten av Trondheim. NTNU: Trondheim
  
  
  

Brute Norse Podcast ep.9: The Chronologies of Ancient Scandinavia pt.3 - Pillaging the Past

In the final segment of the Chronologies of Ancient Scandinavia, Eirik and Aksel tackle the slippery slope of commodification of viking heritage, its uses and abuses. Topics raised include, but are not limited to:
- Are meaderies the devil?
- Are viking re-enactors destroying traditional crafts?
- Is the Society for Creative Anachronism a totalitarian organization?
- Is Greco-Roman heritage a threat to democracy?
- Is human sacrifice as bad as they say?
- Can our admiration for the thieving, hyperviolent, cheating, and overall sinful ways of our ancestors be morally justified?

We even find some time to talk about the chronology! Subscribe using any podcasting service, share to your hearts content, and definitely do consider supporting Brute Norse on Patreon. Also check out the Brute Norse teespring store for some rad shirts.

Barbarian Beverages: The Noble Savage - a simple cocktail with an archaeological twist

While recording the latest, third, episode of the Brute Norse Podcast, me and my guest Aksel Klausen strayed into a long digression about one of our favorite subjects: Drinking culture in the past. The act of drinking is, as I've mentioned elsewhere, a deeply symbolic act. What, where, and how we drink unveils our identities, and often our taboos. Drinking correctly can earn you social prestige, but drinking inappropriately has a wider range of possible outcomes, from the carnivalesque to the abhorrent. Next time you go to a party, bring wine and drink it out of a ceramic mug, or a jar. It will raise questions.

Drinking is socially stratified: For example drinking beer was considered somewhat antithetical to drinking wine, historically. I am thinking of my own, native Norwegian society, but it could apply to many other places too. Beer was unpretentious, but also not "cultured". Today, it does not always make sense to talk about beer in broad terms: It's been accepted as the rich culinary expression it is.

With this came an admittance that beer is also culture - obviously, there was never a point where it wasn't. Even the archetype of the village drunk is a saturated cultural expression. What we're really talking about, is shifting perceptions of what constitutes high and low culture.

Anyway, the dichotomy of beer against wine has ancient roots: Wine drinking cultures, such as ancient Rome and Greece, have tended to perceive beer drinking as barbarian, or at the very least vulgar. Bavarians obviously see no stigma in the consumption of beer, while prohibition era Iceland eventually made exceptions for wine and hard liquor (you might say that Nordic drinking culture was spiritual, wink wink), but they made no exception for beer which , unbelievable as it may sound, was illegal until 1989. It was branded a gateway drug, which can be compared to legalizing cocaine, but not cannabis. A poignant metaphor given Rekjavík's past (?) reputation as a safe harbor for yuppies, who were all drinking prosecco anyway.

Beer drinking cultures have tended to be less judgmental, though there are certainly examples where proponents of beer culture have accused wine of promoting decadence and snobbery, both today and in the ancient past. In Norse and Germanic society, there seems to have been a social hierarchy of beverages: Beer is good, and mead is excellent, but wine is the stuff of legend. Heroic poems like Atlakvi­ða passionately refer to the glory of the feasting hall, where champions take deep sips from "wine-heavy ale bowls". Talk about hedonism. 

at juellinge in denmark, this roman era woman was laid to rest with roman drinking vessels and a strange concoction.

Under the Roman Influence

A proverbial dip into some of the archaeological evidence for Bronze and Iron Age Nordic beverages, primarily in the form of residue on the inside of drinking vessels and containers, suggest that these Nordic cultures were far from purists when it came to what they drank. The residue bears witness to the spectral presence of berries, malt from beer, and pollen and wax from honey mead. There are also occasional traces of wine, and pitch that could either be used to flavor the beverages, but probably as a sealant for the vessels. Wine, of course, being telltale of contact with the mediterranean.

While it is impossible to tell whether or not all of this was contained in the vessels at once, there are enough of these examples to suggest that people living in prehistoric, Bronze Age, and Iron and Dark Age Northern Europe, consumed mixed beverages, often referred to as Nordic grog by the venerable professor Patrick McGovern, who refers to them in such classics as Ancient Wine, Uncorking the Past, and lastly, Ancient Brews - the most recent addition to his bibliography.

I've not read that last one, but you should definitely read the former if you're interested in history, fermented beverages, the history of fermented beverages, or the fermented beverages of history. Let me rephrase that: If you are culturally conscious person person who eats and drinks, then you should read at least one of these books, or die. If you are a scholar, you should buy Uncorking the Past, sit down with a typewriter, and retype every word of it. You will have grown as an educator by the end of it.

There are a lot of opinions about what constitutes a so-called serious academic. I believe it is one who takes his or her material so seriously, that they cannot help but reach out to the public. Who are unafraid of breaking the mold. McGovern is just that, as his impassioned, amiable writing style demonstrates. His books achieve to be both pioneering academic text books, and page turners.

Anyway, my friend and I were chatting. We were already somewhat tipsy on his homemade Roman inspired mulled wine. An earthy, spicy beverage he had fashioned from amphora-fermented Sicilian nectar. As it ran out we decided to return to our barbarian roots and recreate a drink we'd enjoyed many times before, usually by an open fire under the blushing sky of long Norwegian summer nights. This simple, contemporary interpretation of Nordic grog requires only two ingredients: Red wine and lager beer. 

Our choice of ingredients was unpretentious, in true barbarian fashion. The wine came from a Shetland duty free, apparently branded by the store itself. If I recall, I found it somewhat dry and earthy, yet not too heavy on the tannins. Online reviews absolutely slaughter it. We topped it off with Faxe Premium. This Danish pilsner was a no brainer given the horned viking adorning the can.

The result was, according to the words of my companion, the best of both worlds: A drink that achieves to be both diluted wine, and fortified beer, satisfying Roman, as well as barbarian thirsts in equal measure! Like a patrician in the gutter in the final days of Rome. Mind you, the wine provides a better complement to the beer than the beer does to the wine, leaving a wine-heavy product laced with the light head and tapered fizz of the danish pilsner. While both ingredients matter as they need to balance each other, don't go overboard with the choice of wine. Save your wallet. Even then it feels significantly fancier to drink than the beer would have felt on its own, as it proved to be quite silky and easy on the tongue. 

Recipe: The noble Savage

1 parts dry, young red wine

1 parts pilsner or similar lager beer

Preparation:

1. Chill the ingredients slightly

2. Pour stoically into a glass drinking bowl,

(Alternately: a highball glass)

3. Mix carefully, don't spill a drop!

4. Sip medio-slowly

Suggested pairings:

Cured ham, gift exchange and blood oaths.

If you would like to hear Aksel's favorite recipe for Roman spiced wine, pledge your support over at the Brute Norse Patreon page.