The Day the Viking Age Began.

I can imagine that raiding an Anglo-Saxon monastery was exhausting work, but luckily medieval monks ate pretty darn well. So along with a nice silver chalice, make sure to pillage yourself up a dish of pork with berry sauce. Does a Viking good. So thank you to Porter Road for sponsoring this video as we make up a dish that might have been eaten on the day that the Vikings first raided Lindisfarne. This time on Tasting History. Yes, June 8th, 793 is seen as the day that the Viking Age kicked off with the raid on Northumbrian Monastery on the Isle of Lindisfarne, and June is a great time to start the raiding season because the snow is all gone, the seas are relatively calm, and it's berry picking season which is why we're making the recipe that we're making today. Unfortunately the thing about making recipes from this period in history is there are no recipes from this period at least in northern Europe, so we have to rely on other writings from the time that have to kind of do with food and archaeology which brings me to this wonderful book called An Early Meal. The authors Daniel Serra and Hannah Thunberg created recipes based on the methods and ingredients available in specific areas of Scandinavia and England during the Viking Age. So I am adapting one of their recipes for a berry sauce using ingredients that probably would have been available on the Isle of Lindisfarne in 793. Now when it comes to what meat to use there are actually several options. They had geese, fish, sheep, puffin, and even dolphin. See the story goes that one of Lindisfarne's most famous inhabitants Saint Cuthbert was given three servings of dolphin by God. Unfortunately I don't have any dolphin and I wouldn't eat it even if I did so instead I am going to use some meat that I got from today's sponsor Porter Road. Porter Road is an online butcher based in Tennessee that was started by two chefs who wanted to help people get their hands on quality cuts of meat like this wonderful pork tenderloin or this gorgeous bone-in ribeye. They also offer less common cuts of meat like merlot steak or this Denver steak with gorgeous marbling, and I had never had this cut of meat before and let me tell you it is brilliant. It has all of the flavor of something like a chuck roast but the tenderness of a filet. Porter Road works with local farmers who pasture raise their animals and practice humane animal husbandry. There is no added hormones or antibiotics and the beef is dry aged for 14 days and arrives fresh, never frozen, direct to your door. You can order individual cuts a la carte or they also have subscriptions, and in addition to the pork loin and the Denver steak that I got they also sent me pork jowl, ground beef, hot Italian sausage, boneless pork chops, perfect for a summer barbecue. So to give Porter Road a try click the link in the description and get 15% off of your first order. That's 15% using my link in the description. Now as I said you can use pretty much any meat that you want for this recipe but I'm going to go with that pork tenderloin and the reason is one they did raise pigs on the island at the time, and two one of my favorite stories about Saint Cuthbert involves pigs. Actually pig fat though he didn't actually use it for eating. See when Saint Cuthbert first arrived on the Isle of Lindisfarne he first exercised some demons which is what I did when I moved into the new place, and then he built himself a house but very quickly he noticed two ravens picking at his thatched roof because they were trying to make their nest, and even though he was a saint he lost his patience and banished them both from the island, but after three days one of the two returned to the feet of the man of God with humble cries asking his pardon and indulgence. Well I guess Cuthbert had had time to cool down and so he said okay you guys can come back to the island and as a thank you they brought him some pig fat, lard, and it was enough that for the next year he was able to grease the boots of any visitors who came. See in Anglo-Saxon England it was a great honor to have your boots greased whereas when I offer to spread pig fat on people's converse I get weird looks, but regardless that is why for this recipe I chose to use one pound or a You'll also need some salt for seasoning, two tablespoons or about 25 grams of lard or another oil for cooking, one and a half cups or about 125 grams of chopped spring onion or leek, two teaspoons brown mustard seeds roughly crushed, one pound or a half kilogram of fresh berries, one teaspoon chopped mint, a half cup or 120 milliliters of water, and a half cup or 120 milliliters of mead. I'm using this wonderful mead from Denmark called Viking blood not made with actual blood nor actual vikings but it is absolutely fantastic and I'll put a link in the description to where you can get that from Curiata but honestly you can use any mead you want. So how you cook the mead is also really up to you but the Anglo-Saxons loved boiling everything. Meat, fruit, vegetables, fish, you name it they boiled it. Sometimes they would add milk or honey or wine or mead to help flavor it but even so boiling a pork tenderloin just doesn't seem like like a good thing to do. Luckily while not as common they would roast meats over an open flame or I was recently reading the leechdoms as one does which are kind of medical texts with semi recipes from the time period and they would often mention baking meats using the word abacken which is to put it in an oven and luckily the monks at Lindisfarne had ovens. So as I don't have the heart to boil my pork tenderloin I will be braising or baking this in an oven. So first salt the pork well, then melt some lard in a pot over a flame, then add the pork and sear it all around until nice and brown about five to seven minutes. Then remove the pork and add the onions or leeks to the pot and cook for another two to three minutes. Then pour in the mead and the water and stir removing any brown bits from the bottom of the pot. Then add the mint and the mustard seed and bring to a simmer before adding the pork back in. Cover the pot and transfer it to an oven at 325 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 Celsius for about 20 to 30 minutes or until the center of the pork reaches 145 degrees. Then remove the pot and set it back on the stove, then remove the pork and let it rest while you prepare the berry sauce. Just add the berries to the pot with the braising liquid and bring it to a gentle simmer. Let them cook until they're nice and soft. You can't really overcook them so I'd go at least seven to eight minutes. Then turn off the flame and mash the berries, then pour the entire mixture through a sieve pressing out as much of the liquid as possible. Then return the juice to the pot and simmer for another five to seven minutes to let it reduce down, and while the sauce reduces let us also reduce the entire Viking Age down to that first day in 793. So every time I make any kind of Viking recipe or even use the word Viking I get a lot of comments. Because there is a lot of rather pedantic controversy about the term Viking because originally the word did not refer to the entire Norse people of the 7th to 11th centuries which is how we usually use it today, but only to those that were engaged in raiding and pillaging. Essentially pirates that were not part of a war, but as the meaning of words tend to evolve just like December used to mean the 10th month and now we celebrate it in the 12th month, I think we have to be rather flexible with how we use the term Viking. However in this video the term Viking is actually being used in its original sense because those people who rolled up on the shores of Lindisfarne in 793 were most definitely raiding and pillaging, but before we get to them it's actually really important to know about the place that they were pillaging. The Isle of Lindisfarne also called Holy Island is off the east coast of northern England, and the first monastic cathedral there was founded in the early 600s by the Irish Saint Aidan who served as Lindisfarne Priory's first bishop. And I know what you're thinking, a bishop's seat is usually in a very big city with a lot of other people around, and you're right and the people even at this time seemed a little confused about it as well because the Venerable Bede who was writing not long after the founding said, And unlike a large cathedral in a big city where then a bishop would be treated like a great lord, Bede says that at Lindisfarne everyone from the priests, deacons, singers, and readers, and other ecclesiastical grades together with the bishop himself keep the monastic rule in all things, very down to earth until it became a tourist trap. Yes today while visitors go to Hollywood Boulevard and Disneyland the place to vacation in 8th century Europe was church, and instead of waiting hours in line to see Mickey Mouse be he the real thing or a cheap knockoff medieval pilgrims waited in line to see the bones and other relics of saints even though sometimes those were also cheap knockoffs, but in Lindisfarne the bones of Saint Cuthbert were almost definitely real and people flocked from all over Britain to see these bones, and if remains of dead saints aren't your thing they had other things because the monks were known all across northern Europe for their wonderful medical knowledge and were the proud creators of the Lindisfarne Gospels, some of the most spectacular illuminated manuscripts of the time. There was something for everyone at Lindisfarne, and just like tourist traps or theme parks today have a whole infrastructure around them to to help deal with all the people, so that same thing happened on Lindisfarne, and so by the 790s it was not just the priory but a whole little village had grown up around it, and then came the year 793, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle lets us know what happened in 793 and it was not a good year. This year dreadful foreboding omens came over the land of the Northumbrians terrifying the people most woefully. These were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds and fiery dragons were seen flying across the sky. These signs were soon followed by a great famine, and not long after on the sixth day before the Ides of January in the same year the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne with pillaging and slaughter, and yes it says January but that is because of a scribal error we do know from other writings of the time that it was in June, and specifically we know that it was at high tide. See Lindisfarne is not really an island all the time. It's what's known as a tidal island, and at low tide there was a muddy footpath that could lead you to and from the mainland, and on that mainland there was a well-defended castle at Bambera. So if you're going to attack an undefended priory there you're going to do it at high tide so that the fellows from the castle can't come over to save a day. So high tide is coming in and the villagers and monks see off in the distance some ships coming, but they were probably just traders heading to the mainland. Happened all the time but as they got closer they noticed on the prow of their ships there were dragons, and the men inside were large, probably blonde, and carrying axes and swords. They came to the church at Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars, and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in chains, many they drove out naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea. So there were other people there that day but all of the writings focus on the church and the monks, and it was because it was a church, and because they were monks that people freaked out, and it's often seen as the day that the Viking Age began. It also helped that word of the event actually spread very far very quickly because of correspondence from Bishop Higbald who was there that day and actually survived writing to Alcuin who was a scholar at the court of Charlemagne, and Alcuin writing back to Higbald was shocked that the Vikings poured out the blood of saints around the altar, laid waste the house of our hope, trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God like dung in the street. See there had been other Viking raids that just never really got much attention because while it's you know never a good thing to kill peasants and tear up villages, Alcuin and the others of the time were worried about the church. For what assurance is there for the churches of Britain if Saint Cuthbert defends not his own? Either this is the beginning of greater tribulation or else the sins of the inhabitants have called it upon them. Truly it has not happened by chance but is a sign that it was well merited by someone." So first he blames the bones of a dead saint for not coming to the rescue and then in one of history's most infamous cases of victim blaming he actually pins it on the monks saying that they were kind of asking for it because of the fact that they were drinking and of how they were dressed. Do not glory in the vanity of dress that is cause for shame, not boasting in priests and servants of God. Do not blur the words of your prayers by drunkenness. Do not go out after the indulgences of the flesh and the greed of the world. Stand firm in the service of God and the saints will not cease protecting you if they see you following their example. Sounds like a jerk but he did promise to at least bring the matter up with Charlemagne if only to try to get some of those monks who had been sent into slavery back. When our Lord King Charles returns from defeating his enemies by God's mercy I plan to go to him and if I can do anything for you about the boys who have been carried off by the pagans as prisoners or about any other of your needs I shall make every effort to see that it is done. And we don't know if he ever got any of them back but probably not and even if he had it would have been a small victory because for the next few centuries the Vikings went nuts. They spread across Britain, through Russia, into the Byzantine Empire, Northern Europe, and all the way down to Sicily and they kept visiting that poor little Isle of Lindisfarne until eventually the monks had to abandon the entire place. The ruins of the monastery that are there now actually are much later from a monastery that was built in 1093 after the monks were able to come back once the Vikings of Europe had transitioned over into being the aristocracy of Europe. And you might think that after the first, second, or even third raid on your island the monks would stop having things that the Vikings wanted to steal or maybe what kept bringing the Norsemen back to the island was the temptation of a wonderful pork with berry sauce. And here we are pork tenderloin with berry sauce that might have been eaten at the beginning of the Viking Age. So it smells really good but the sauce is not very thick. I kind of thought that it would be thicker and maybe it depends on what kind of fruit you're using but without adding any kind of starch it's just not going to thicken up as much as one might expect a sauce today. So it kind of soaks into the meat but maybe that's okay. Let's give it a shot. It's okay. First of all the pork is absolutely fantastic and it's kind of a nice neutral palette that lets the sauce really shine and shine it does because at first it's really very sweet but then the sweetness is completely eclipsed by these much more interesting flavors of the mustard, of the actual meat that was cooked that you know that was in the sauce, the meat juice, and then you get a little bit of the spice from the leek or the onion and then only at the very, very end do you get a hint of that mint. It's kind of refreshing. It's really, really interesting. It's a wonderful mix of the flavors and it could go on pretty much like I said it could go on pretty much any meat but I think that with something a little lighter like a pork or a chicken it's going to shine more than something really gamey that has a lot of flavor in the meat itself. So follow me on Instagram Tasting History with Max Miller or you can check out my Patreon which I'll put a link in the description if you want to support the channel that way or just watch more videos like this one about Dragonheart, another wonderful Viking episode, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.