Overnight stay at the viking camp

On Saturday I started my summer vacation. Work has been really busy the last two weeks and I felt that I needed to just go off somewhere and shut it off. I heard with the people at Ingvara Viking, that I visited on June 6th, and I was welcome to come and stay over night as well Saturday-Sunday.

I wore my only viking outfit, so the same as on June 6th, but for the evening I added an amber necklace that I have.

I did feel fancy though since Sofia, the daugher of one of the owners, is very good with doing viking hairstyles, so she braided my hair.

The lambs that were newborn when I visited in June had grown a bit now.

Of course I wanted to cook and do food preparations. I had brought with me two sets for making cheese. For Saturday evening I made a cheese by curdling whole milk and cream with vinegar. That one drains pretty quick so it only takes an hour or so.

The other cheese was made by heating up sour milk (filmjölk) with a bit of sour cream (gräddfil) and then let it drain over night, so we had it for breakfast in the morning. The taste was pretty similar with the different methods, but the sourmilk one had a consistency that was closer to cream cheese while the milk and vinegar one gets grainier, almost like a crumbly feta style cheese. I'm not sure yet which style I prefer.

I got to sleep over in a corner of the stable, that they use as their shop. I had brought a modern sleeping bag and a wool underwear set. I also had my Enfys Nest cape and a sheep skin as blankets. I didn't feel cold. I think that for next summer, when I hopefully will go to proper events again, I want to make a wool gown that I can sleep in. I was woken up when I heard some scracthing noices and one of the hens started to get closer to me.

Good morning!

One of my favorite moments was getting up and cooking breakfast on the fire. We had oatmeal with apple and honey, freshly made flatbread with butter and cheese, and eggs. I'm not a big breakfast eater, but I just kept eating because it tasted so good.

For lunch we made herb dumplings from this recipe from Ribe Viking Center. It was a good thing to try making dumplings for ourselves and not for paying guests or as a demonstration first.

The herbs were taken by doing a round around the camp and picking stuff that's edible. The dumplings tasted good, but we all agreed on that it was too much work for the result. We also got a lot of filling leftover, but we simply heated it up with some fresh cabbage and had it as a sidedish. I think we agree on that as a demonstration meal or for guests it would be better to make some kind of flatbread or unfilled dumplings and then serve the green stew as a side dish.

Lovisa and Susanne are preparing the dumplings and greens

 Working by an open hearth is not the most ergonomical thing to do. They have a bench up where we could prepare the food, but there is a lot of standing up and bending down into the pots. They have a plan for the future to build a cooking shed, that would be more protected agianst the weather and also allow some more comfortable working spaces.

The dumplings with the leftover greens

I had also tried to make a Slavic drink called kvass, but I'm going to talk about that in its own post.

Rhubarb kvass