Viking Month: Practical. Review.

2 months ago I started researching for a personal Viking project, learning about my own Norse ancestry, about the UK’s Viking history and about Viking culture. Then, one month ago, I moved to a more practical attempt to take on a few tenets of Viking lifestyle. 

I tried to eat as they ate, work out as they did, and I grew somewhat of a large ginger beard. (Men with brown hair and red beards have the MCR-1 or MRC1 gene, which doesn’t mean you live in Manchester City Centre, but does mean you probably have Viking heritage. 

So, what does a practical Viking project look like? What did I do? 

Murdering people with swords was out for obvious reasons, as was farming. But I did eat a lot of porridge, veg and fish. I ate twice a day – Dagmal and Nattmal – learning to fast throughout the day. It wasn’t that difficult to stave off hunger pangs when you’re stocking up every morning on porridge, apples, bacon, eggs, bread and milk. 

I tried a couple of recipes from Eat Like a Viking!, a cookbook by Craig Brooks, with historical recipes from the 9th century. One was more of a success than the other. More of that to be uploaded soon. 

As it happens, Comic Con Manchester took place at the end of the month and a good handful of the cast of History Channel’s Vikings were guests. I was surrounded by a horde of Viking cosplayers. See my writeup for more.

Sadly I did not get around to any Kotlich cooking or firelighting, and there’s a Channel 5 documentary on Vikings that I’ve had a link to for about a month and still not watched. That’s largely because I bought that cookbook off Amazon and got a Prime trial. I keep finding films on there I want to check out before I get charged. There isn’t much Viking stuff though.  

I did tons of working out, focussing on movements that my research tells me Vikings would have done. I put 2 more on my wide-grip chin-up record, now standing at 21. 2 more on my horizontal overhand grip chin-up record, now at 23. 1 more on my extra-wide chin-up record, with palms facing about a metre apart. That’s now at 21. And I absolutely obliterated my 10-minute row record, something I did as a warm-up, now standing at 2330m. Vikings would have done a lot of rowing on the open seas, for travel and fishing. The only previous record I could find in my notes for 10-min row suggested 2028m. I did a lot of other workouts like farmer’s walk – walking carrying dumbbells – and deadlift.

My weight’s dropped slightly from 83kg at the start to 79.9kg today. (Although I’ve just had fish and chips as a reward, so…)  

Not as interesting a month as last. No conversations with Norse specialists. No huge revelations. No lunches either, like last month, which, with plenty of water, wasn’t that difficult. Hunger pangs can be staved off when you’re gorging on porridge and washing it down with a cheese and ham toastie most mornings. 

But an enjoyable historical experiment.