Viking Biscuits

Viking bread recipes are great for quick and nourishing breads that take no leavening agents.  Our favorite recipe we already posted here a while ago.  This is the recipe to our second favorite kind of quick-bread.  The original recipe can be found on TheHistoryBlog, where you will also find the featured image.  There, it says:

They even have bread loaves that appear to have survived thanks to carbonization, like the bread from Herculaneum. The Viking bread found in Birka, Sweden, was analyzed and the likely recipe recreated. It’s ridiculously healthy, made primarily from barley flour and including flax seeds.

Our version is slightly modified as we use what flour we have rather than going out to buy specialty twigs and pebbles.  I’m sure the Vikings did the same.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups wholewheat flour
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsp lard or butter
• pinch of salt

Directions

Work all the ingredients together into a dough and knead until smooth.  It doesn’t take very long.  Roll into a log and let rest in the fridge, preferably covered, for at least one hour, or overnight, if you plan on making the bread for breakfast.

Before frying (or baking), cut the dough into flat cakes.  If you make them about 1/4 inch,  they fry very quickly.  Fry them in a cast iron pan on the stove over medium heat, a few minutes on each side, or in the oven at 300F, for 10–13 minutes.

These little cakes are rather satisfying and taste good with sweet or savory toppings, or just as they are with a dab of butter.

Who Were The Very First Denney’s?

It’s that time of year again, when we blow off the dust from boxes of documents, photos, and old handwritten notes, reactivate the Ancestry.com account, and continue exploring the family’s history.

The material quoted below comes from the work of Richard F. Denney.  His web site was one of the first I came across when I caught the genealogy virus, many moons ago.  I had occasion one time to correspond with Mr. Denney, helping to correct a minor error in the record of my grandfather Lorain Franklin Denney.  Sadly, Richard F. Denney passed away July of 2011.  His genealogical efforts are greatly appreciated.

While I am not able, for obvious reasons, to attest to the validity of the Viking theory, it fits with certain personal experiences of a particularly Jungian flavor that I’ve had over the years.

“The existence of these archaic strata is presumably the source of man’s belief in reincarnations and in memories of “previous experiences”. Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche.”

~C.G. Jung, “Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation”, 1939

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by Richard F. Denney

One theory that seems to have considerable merit is that the earliest Dennys were Vikings or North Men who settled along the Normandy Coast of France. French history tells of a Danish Prince named Bernard, who, along with his cousin Rollo, settled in Normandy. Members of this Norman colony or settlement of Danes were called the Danish Men or L’Denshmen or in French, L’Denne.

Some of these early Denshmen migrated across the Channel and settled in southern England.

Because of the unrest in the English country side, many of the Surrey Dennys migrated to Ireland and Scotland. Scotch and Irish Dennys were noted for large families. Many Dennys from England, Scotland and Ireland came to America in the late 1600s and early 1700s to escape hunger, unrest and religious persecution. Most of these people ended up in the Western Frontier which was then Western Pennsylvania.

Later, around the Daniel Boone era, many of these Dennys migrated on to Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee. Others continued on into Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. As a matter of fact, Daniel Boone trapped on the Raccoon Creek, Gallia County, Ohio about the same time period as when the first Denneys were to arrive in that area and settled around the creek.

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Samuel Denney (1635 – 1710), my 10th great-grandfather
Birth 1635 • Avon River section, England
Death 1710 • Tidewater region, Virginia, USA

James Denney (1777–1860), my 5th great-grandfather
Birth 1777 • Pilot Creek, Surry County, NC
Death 29 JUN 1860 • Gallipolis, Gallia, Ohio, USA

Featured Image:  Viking ships on the Normandy coast. Scene from the Bayeux tapestry.

VIDEO: Thor’s Hammer Fire Striker Pendant – Mjollnir – flint and steel fire making

Great YouTube channel from Bjørn Andreas Bull-Hansen, for those interested in Viking Bushcraft.