Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [114]
Livestock grew better than crops in Norway’s cool climate. The livestock were the same five species that had provided the basis of Fertile Crescent and European food production for thousands of years: cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses. Of those species, the ones considered of highest status by Vikings were pigs bred for meat, cows for milk products such as cheese, and horses used for transport and prestige. In Old Norse sagas, pork was the meat on which warriors of the Norse war god Odin feasted daily in Valhalla after their deaths. Much lower in prestige, but still useful economically, were sheep and goats, kept more for milk products and wool or hair than for meat.
Counts of bones in an archaeologically excavated garbage heap at a 9th-century chieftain’s farm in southern Norway revealed the relative numbers of different animal species that the chieftain’s household consumed. Nearly half of all livestock bones in the midden were of cows, and one-third were of the prized pigs, while only one-fifth belonged to sheep and goats. Presumably an ambitious Viking chief setting up a farm overseas would have aspired to that same mix of species. Indeed, a similar mix is found in garbage heaps from the earliest Viking farms in Greenland and Iceland. However, the bone proportions differed on later farms there, because some of those species proved less well adapted than others to Greenland and Iceland conditions: cow numbers decreased with time, and pigs almost vanished, but the numbers of sheep and goats increased.
The farther north that one lives in Norway, the more essential it becomes in the winter to bring livestock indoors into stalls and to provide them with food there, instead of leaving them outdoors to forage for themselves. Hence those heroic Viking warriors actually had to spend much of their time during the summer and fall at the homely tasks of cutting, drying, and gathering hay for winter livestock feed, rather than fighting the battles for which they were more famous.
In areas where the climate was mild enough to permit gardening, Vikings also grew cold-tolerant crops, especially barley. Other crops less important than barley (because they are less hardy) were the cereals oats, wheat, and rye; the vegetables cabbage, onions, peas, and beans; flax, to make linen cloth; and hops, to brew beer. At sites progressively farther north in Norway, crops receded in importance compared to livestock. Wild meat was a major supplement to domestic livestock as a source of protein—especially fish, which account for half or more of the animal bones in Norwegian Viking middens. Hunted animals included seals and other marine mammals, reindeer and moose and small land mammals, seabirds taken on their breeding colonies, and ducks and other waterfowl.
Iron implements discovered at Viking sites by archaeologists tell us that Vikings used iron for many purposes: for heavy agricultural tools such as plows, shovels, axes, and sickles; small household tools, including knives, scissors, and sewing needles; nails, rivets, and other construction hardware; and, of course, military tools, especially swords, spears, battle-axes, and armor. The remains of slag heaps and charcoal-producing pits at iron-processing sites let us reconstruct how Vikings obtained their iron. It was not mined on an industrial scale at centralized factories, but at small-scale mom-and-pop operations on each individual farm. The starting material was so-called bog iron widespread in Scandinavia: i.e., iron oxide that has become dissolved in water and then precipitated by acidic conditions or bacteria in bogs and lake sediments. Whereas modern iron-mining companies select ores containing between 30 and 95% iron oxide, Viking smiths