The Viking Fleet Supply Dispute
After I wrote an article about the food supply of the Viking fleets, in which I went over professional historians, they started arguing with me. It is good that they argue, because it is absolutely necessary. The entire greatness of classical European science stood precisely on disputes, sometimes very fierce ones, clashes of theories and concepts.
And so I was told that, it turns out, you can’t ruin the lives of professional historians. They are so wonderful that you can't touch them. Meanwhile, the side that has lost the dispute is faced with a ruined life. For example, he has been asserting some theory all his life, has written many publications, has defended a dissertation... And now it turns out that this theory is worthless, since it is based on false premises. The collapse of all scientific life. Therefore, disputes are not at all a harmless thing.
However, have the courage to admit your wrongness, without falling into resentment, a desire for revenge, or a desire to crush the victorious opponent with administrative or social methods, such as organizing a persecution. I do not consider it shameful to admit your wrongness, and I have had to do this in print, although not in this topic, but in the topic of famine in Kazakhstan. But for this I need very compelling arguments.
Tons of bones
Speaking of arguments, I was accused here of not taking into account the role of hunting and fishing in food supply.
Good. There is more than enough material characterizing the meat diet of various settlements of the Viking Age. These are tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of animal bones. In Birka in Sweden, for example, 5,5 tons of bones were collected. All this is analyzed by animal species, and in general the direction of "livestock archeology" is developing, which uses methods up to and including isotope analysis.
So, the overwhelming majority of animal bones from these settlements belong to domestic cattle: cattle, pigs, sheep and goats.
For example, in Hedeby, Denmark: 47,3% cattle, 14,3% sheep and goats, 37,1% pigs. For everything else, including birds, fish, dogs and cats - 1,1% bones. Interestingly, there is no fish, although Hedeby is located on the shore of a sea bay.
In Scandinavian-occupied York, England, the picture is the same: 59% cattle, 21,7% sheep and goats, 12,1% pigs. Everything else is 7,2%. There is fish, but only 0,2% bones.
Dorestad at the mouth of the Rhine: 64,6% cattle, 14,5% sheep and goats, 12,1% pigs. Everything else - 8,8%, also including horses, dogs and cats, birds, etc. animals. There is no fish either, neither sea nor river. Although it would seem so.
Paviken, Gotland. It seems to be a seaport... However, 40% of the identified bones are cattle, 6,5% sheep and goats, 3,5% pigs. Fish bones are vanishingly rare.
Kaupang, Norway. There, researchers had to work hard to collect poorly preserved bone remains. But here too, the overwhelming majority of bones belonged to pigs, cattle, sheep, and goats. Researchers identified 70,8 bones, but found only five wild reindeer bones. Kaupang has a high proportion of fish bones — 42% of the identified bones, mostly herring and cod. But there are no bones of freshwater fish, despite the fact that Kaupang is located near rivers.
Reconstruction of Kaupang
Or take the settlement of Tornimäe on the island of Saaremaa. Up to 91% of the bones are domestic animals, about 6% are seals, and about 1% are fish bones, and only freshwater ones. And this is despite the fact that Saaremaa is located in the middle of a marine fishing area. Think what you want.
This is, of course, far from exhaustive statistics, but it generally paints the picture of the situation. The basis of the meat diet was represented by domestic cattle, and not wild animals at all. Any preparations of game, and especially on the industrial scale that were required to supply fleets Vikings of a hundred ships or more, would certainly have yielded a higher percentage of wild animal bones, which would have been noticed by researchers. Especially if these wild animal bones were dumped somewhere in one pile or were confined to a certain layer.
The objection itself was methodologically incorrect. Possibility is not an argument. To speak definitely, one must operate with firmly proven facts, in this case osteological materials. It is possible that places of slaughter and cutting up of wild animals can be found somewhere on the coast of Sweden or Norway. If such places are discovered, we will consider them.
But so far it has been proven that in the large port settlements of the Viking Age, where, obviously, the Viking fleets were supplied with food, clothing and other supplies, there are almost no bones of wild animals, which means that any kind of mass harvesting of game for meat was not practiced.
This has a simple economic explanation: livestock is available; an experienced buyer could tell by eye how much meat would come out of the livestock presented to him. But how much would be hunted, how much meat would come out, and whether it would be enough to cover needs - this is very difficult to say in advance.
Fish into flour
The objection to fishing is the same as to hunting: opportunity is not an argument. I have a counter-objection related to the fact that fish is a perishable product. Traditional methods of processing and preserving it, described, for example, by B.A. Heinemann, did not make fish a product with a long shelf life. Smoked fish was stored for 3-7 days, salted fish in brine - from 15 to 30 days, dried fish - up to 4 months. Only dried salmon could be stored for a year.
Thus, fish caught during the summer-autumn of one year could not be used the following year; it did not have an expiration date. Hence the conclusion. The ship's rations could have included either dried salmon, which was caught in the Eastern Baltic, in the Gulf of Finland and in Lake Ladoga, or freshly caught, smoked or salted cod. Looking at the composition of the osteological material, we have no reason to assert that fish made up a significant share of the ship's rations or even replaced meat.
In general, it is surprising that in settlements located right on the shore of the Baltic Sea, they almost never ate fish, although they undoubtedly caught it. I put forward the following explanation for this strange fact, as usual, extravagant. I think that the fishermen did not bother with preserving the fish they caught, but immediately processed it into fish meal, which they sold as feed for domestic animals. Everything goes into fish meal, it is in a certain sense a waste-free production, and the shelf life of fish meal in good packaging, for example, a tightly sealed barrel, is about a year.
So a fisherman must think about how to sell his catch in a few days before it starts to stink. But he slowly makes fish meal, puts it in barrels, takes it out and slowly sells it in winter and spring before the start of the new fishing season. Fish meal is the most important component of mixed feed for livestock. If this is so, then the absence of fish bones in the materials of coastal settlements becomes clear.
The Norwegian Kaupang, located on the shore of Viksfjord, in the vicinity of Larvik, was in different conditions and was forced to eat fish. The fact is that Vestfold, where this Kaupang is located, is a combination of sea, rocks and forest, in which there is very little free land for plowing and meadows, and the soil there is rocky. On the populated coast, forest-free spaces are approximately 30-40% of the total area, and this is after a thousand years of logging. In ancient times, there were more forests, less free land, accordingly, they could not keep a lot of cattle there, due to this circumstance, they ate ocean herring and cod.
A photo from the Kaupang excavations shows what the soil is like there
There was a fair amount of fish in Kaupang, so ships could take fish supplies on board there. But whether there was or not, we cannot prove it for sure.
Combat missions
Finally, the often-stated claim that the Vikings could hunt and fish during their expeditions is not only methodologically incorrect (possibility is not an argument), but also essentially absurd. A military expedition is not a pleasure cruise; each ship and crew had their own combat missions. This is obvious if you think about it.
Combat missions, although we know nothing about them, were varied, and this follows from the very essence of military affairs, especially in such a complex modification as landing from sea to land.
Reconnaissance. This is reconnaissance of enemy forces, their location and intentions; reconnaissance of attack targets, and, what is very important, reconnaissance of approaches to the coast and targets. In my opinion, the Vikings devoted a great deal of attention and time to this third type of reconnaissance, which included observation of winds, currents, tides, shallows, rivers and other things.
When you have tidal variations of 5-6 meters, as in the Seine estuary, it means that the hydrography of the coast changes dramatically. In a convenient bay during high tide, you can end up on a sandbank, helpless, during low tide. Or, conversely, the tide can carry ships away from a convenient bay during low tide. During low tide, dangerous sandbanks, rocks, banks can appear. And so on. For a successful attack, especially by a large squadron, it is necessary to conduct a thorough hydrographic and meteorological reconnaissance of the combat area. This is the allocation of ships and crews for a long time.
A modern reconstruction of a medium-sized Viking ship. In the comments under the previous article there was a discussion about the drakkar's ability to sail downwind. This ship, as you can see, sails close-hauled.
Landing. This definitely included not only landing of warrior detachments on the shore, but also provision of their actions on the shore, including food. Following the warriors, a kitchen team landed on the shore and some of the supplies were unloaded. And this must be foreseen, and not rely on trophies. Food in a threatened area can be taken out, or spoiled, or taken under increased protection, as during the war against the "Great Heathen Army" in England. The tasks also included protecting the ship's anchorages from attacks from land and sea, collecting the wounded and caring for them, collecting trophies, guarding prisoners, minor repairs to ships, and so on and so forth. If a ship landed about 50-60% of the crew as a landing force, then the rest had so many tasks and duties that there was neither time nor free hands for fishing or hunting.
And one always had to keep one's ears open - for the enemy, an attack on the camp and the destruction of the ships meant the complete defeat of the invading pagans.
Cases where the Vikings suffered defeat due to their carelessness not only happened, but were even recorded in chronicles.
Convoy. Since the wars with Christians were waged for many years in a row, there were undoubtedly transport tasks: delivering food and supplies to distant forward bases, such as Dublin in Ireland, transferring reinforcements, picking up and transporting the wounded and sick, transporting especially valuable trophies and prisoners. These shipments had to be guarded and accompanied, that is, escorted.
As we can see, there were many combat missions in hostile waters and on enemy territory, but the Vikings did not have an abundance of people. In land armies, numerous servants followed the army, taking on rear and auxiliary functions, but the Vikings on ships did not have such an opportunity at all. If we talk about fishing, then only in large squadrons was it possible to allocate 1-2 ships under protection for fishing, if there was some urgent need for it.
It is for this reason that I believe that hunting and fishing during the Vikings' military campaigns, if they did occur, were very rare and did not have a significant impact on food supplies. Moreover, they were not an integral part of the Viking fleet's food supply.
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