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It really depends on where the people lived. Iceland survived for 1000 years on a diet of some root vegetables, fish, milk and mammals. I would not wish their e
by ppeetteerr 9y ago
It really depends on where the people lived. Iceland survived for 1000 years on a diet of some root vegetables, fish, milk and mammals. I would not wish their existence on anyone today. People in warmer climates would have a better diet but it's clear that agriculture and husbandry were historically more desirable over pure hunting and gathering, even in warmer regions like Egypt.
- cgh 9y agoThat Icelandic diet sounds pretty similar to how I eat today. What's unhealthy about it?
- ppeetteerr 9y agoIt's not the same cooking you've come to expect. There is a whole wikipedia entry on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_cuisine#Medieval_Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_cuisine#Medieval_Ice...
- Eric_WVGG 9y agoI assume your response is coming from a low-carb/paleo perspective? No leafy greens or vitamin-rich vegetables. The vegetables that are there (root vegetables) are carby and not especially nutritious. Huge vitamin deficiency across the board.
- cgh 9y agoThat is simply incorrect. For example, beef liver is about twenty times more nutritious than fruit by mass. My original question was a bit cheeky as I already knew the answer.
- ivanhoe 9y agoYes, but don't forget that for a relatively small amount of a beef liver you need to kill a whole cow. And when you kill the animal you couldn't cherry-pick the parts of the meat you use, everything was used while it lasted. The parts that could be preserved would last for a while and things like a liver would be eaten right away or used to make sausages. In the middle age common folks didn't eat meat as often as we do today, it was a luxury. They primarily used a lot of buttermilk, cheese and eggs instead.
- gehwartzen 9y agoNot when you eat the entire animal including organ meat as these folks undoubtedly did.
- puranjay 9y agoYou get your diet from a warm supermarket. Or heck, delivered to your door. The Icelandic ancestors didn't have that luxury in their country's bitter cold
- jordanb 9y ago> it's clear that agriculture and husbandry were historically more desirable over pure hunting and gathering, even in warmer regions like Egypt. It's clear that agricultural societies were more fit than hunter-gatherer societies. Agricultural societies could breed more people and use them to kill the hunter-gatherers and take their land. Even if the meat/vegetable eaters were bigger and stronger than the grain eaters, there were simply a lot more grain eaters. Classic Greek myths are full of references to "golden age" men who were displaced by more degenerate modern, civilized men. I can't help read those myths as a story of the rise of agriculture.
- staticautomatic 9y agoIndeed, many of the Vikings who gave up on raiding often settled in what's now England, Ireland, and Normandy, whereas their discovery of Iceland was an accident and its settlement was only partly intentional.
- maze-le 9y agoThese "golden age" men of the Greek myths also lived in palaces (palace of agamemnon) and practiced agriculture. In these myths some typical topoi are also cattle raids, palace intrigues and territorial disputes. These are not the hallmarks of hunter-gatherer societies. These myths should be treated as such, myths. Maybe they have a little historical truth in it, since the mycenean people (precursor to the archaic greek civilisation) definitly had palaces and an elaborate trade network spanning the eastern mediterranean. These are more advanced feats than pre-archaic greek civilisation, wich developed into smaller tribal and rural communities at the time before homer wrote his epics.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- posterboy 9y agosounds like those would be the "degenerate modern, civilized men" or do you think the GP means the doric invaders?
- danieltillett 9y agoAs bad as Iceland might have been, Greenland was worse.