TIL about the weird mystery behind Viking age butter found in bogs

I was watching a show last night and learned that people keep finding old butter buried in peat bogs from Viking times. The butter is still kinda solid after over a thousand years, which is crazy. Experts don't really know why they put it there, some say for storage, others think it might have been for rituals. I read that one chunk was even tried and said to taste like cheese. It makes me wonder what other everyday foods from history have strange secrets. Have you heard about any other food items dug up with weird stories?

3 comments

3 Comments

cole3010d ago

Is the butter in bogs actually a big mystery? Peat bogs are cool and dry, so it makes sense for keeping food fresh, and people back then probably knew that. Calling it a ritual might just be us reading too much into simple food storage.

logan_nguyen529d ago

Yeah and it's funny you say that, cause my cousin once found what he swore was an old cheese wrapped up in cloth near a bog on his land. Never got it checked out but it made me wonder how many of these things were just someone's lunch they forgot about. I mean we always want to make things into a big story, but maybe they just needed a cold place to put the butter for a while. Always makes me picture some guy getting home and being like, oh right, left the butter in the bog.

shah.faith8d ago

Imagine the look on his face when he got home empty-handed. All that effort to keep the butter cool, and he forgets it anyway. Now we're writing papers about his simple mistake.