Viking Mead - Past & Present
Have you found yourself lying awake in bed wondering what the vikings drank? Vikings often get the credit for inventing mead thanks to popular TV shows and books, but did they really do it? There are many cultures with historical references to mead including China, India, Greece and Egypt, so we don’t actually know who genuinely was the first people to develop mead.
In it’s most basic form, a Viking mead would have been honey diluted with water and then fermented to create alcohol. Mead is not a liquor since liquor requires distillation.
According to Norse mythology, the gods themselves consumed mead, and it was believed to bestow wisdom and poetic inspiration. The story of the Mead of Poetry, which the gods created from the blood of the wise being Kvasir, reinforced the idea that mead represented knowledge and spiritual power
What Does Viking Mead Taste Like?
Until we can talk to one of the immortals living among us, we won’t really know for sure. However, we can make some guesses on what may or may have not been found in some of the traditional Viking meads.
Honey cannot directly ferment due to its low water content, so Vikings presumably diluted honey with water, which would allow fermentation to occur. Alternatively, if honey was harvested before the bees capped it, the higher water concentration could cause spontaneous fermentation of the curing nectar. Prior to modern day cultivated yeast production, Vikings would have been limited to the wild yeasts that are found all over the environment.
Wild yeasts are variable in their ability to create different levels of alcohol. Without the understanding of chemistry, Vikings likely inadvertently naturally selected yeasts in the pots and tools to higher alcohol levels as those yeasts would colonize the partially fermented must when other more aggressive, but less alcohol tolerant yeasts, fizzled out.
But did it taste good? One important aspect of fermentation that often gets overlooked is the role of yeast in the flavor of mead. Yeast, like us, require nutrients and when they don’t have the right nutrients, they get upset. Upset yeast can cause create other byproducts during fermentation that don’t taste very good. “Kerosene” and “rocket fuel” are descriptors often used for meads that had unhappy yeast fermenting the sugars. Not all yeasts produce tasty flavors either. In these wild environments, different bacterial strains likely imparted additional interesting flavors.
Thankfully, advancements in fermentation science now allow us to create environments where yeasts happily ferment away, leaving clean, floral fermentation esters and alcohol behind.
Do Vikings Drink Mead Out of Horns?
It can be easy to forget with our modern world that the basic utensils that we have today have not always existed. Yes, goat or ox horns were used as a convenient beverage holder. If you go by a local Ren Fairre, you are likely to see a Viking or two strolling down an aisle with a horn in hand. Plastic horns are now available for those that would prefer a non-animal based drinking horn. If you do purchase an animal-based horn, just make sure it is sourced ethically.
Did Vikings Add Other Ingredients to Mead?
Flowers, fruit, herbs, and spices were certainly added to mead. The alcohol of the mead had the ability to extract different alcohol-soluble elements of the additional ingredients that could not be obtained just by just water alone. Vikings likely infused mead with different ingredients as medicine.