The Vikings were an amazing people, but life was very hard for them. Every year, many Vikings died from influenza, or starved to death because of food spoilage or insufficient food stores to last throughout the long, harsh winters.The Vikings adapted their lifestyle to these winters. The “longhouse” was “long” because it was easier to chop down an entire tree and drag it into a long, central fire pit, than to chop it into logs. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Residents of the longhouse had “sleeping cupboards” and long open benches along the sides of the longhouse. In winter, couples shut themselves up inside their sleeping cupboards viking axes a loft type area with doors that closed – to gain warmth from one another’s body heat. There was little privacy of course, but physical intimacy was considered a routine aspect of everyday life
In the kitchen of a Viking longhouse, foods such as yogurt, grain, and dried fish were stored in barrels buried into the ground and covered with wooden lids that were floor-level. The coldness of the ground helped to preserve the food, and being in the ground, much space was conserved in the kitchen. A problem many early people had was getting food to last over the winter. What does one do with a large mammoth, for instance? It can’t be eaten all at once. The Vikings had an unusual solution: They dragged the mammoth into a pond or lake, and weighted it down so that it remained on the bottom of the lake. The water temperature and the ice above preserved the meat until spring, when it was brought out and roasted for a huge celebration.
The typical landscape of the Vikings – rocky lands, steep mountains and fjords, and long winters – made agriculture a challenge. While many Vikings were simple farmers and shepherds, it was difficult to find enough land to sustain everyone. The Vikings got their reputation from the marauding tribes that sought to find better and more hospitable lands. Yet many Vikings viewed the behavior of these select few as the salvation of their group, because if they were unable to secure new lands upon which the tribes could settle, the Vikings at home would starve.
Perhaps as a result, Viking families rewarded aggressiveness and praised violent traits in their children. People who traveled through the Viking territories wrote accounts of what they saw. In reading these accounts, it is surprising to see a mother praising a son for using his axe to kill a rival tribe’s boy, for instance.