*nerdy squeal*

I found Skyr in the grocery store! *squeal* ... Okay, I will explain, because I'm sure very few people outside of Iceland and maybe Scandinavia and Canada have ever heard of this stuff...

Skyr is the national dish of Iceland according to the Icelandic Tourist Board. It's a very, very soft fat-free cheese. This package that I'm looking at calls it a yogurt, but it's actually a cheese. It's very thick, thicker than the thickest sour cream, but not as thick as cream cheese. It's somewhere in between them. And it taste a little like sour cream or plain yogurt. But it's completely fat-free, and very high in calcium and protein, and always made from skim milk. There are three ingredients in plain skyr: skim milk (preferably unpasteurized cow's or sheep's milk, if we're being strictly traditional), live cultures and rennet. That's it. No sugar, no artificial anything. It is yum! I do like it! Skyr that's made from sheep's milk is naturally sweeter than that made from cow's milk, but I think the idea of cow's milk is probably more palatable to Americans, so the skyr that I found at the grocery store is made from cow's milk.

Next question would be, why am I spazzing out over it? Well, it's a very old kind of cheese and therefore it makes my inner (who am I kidding? there's no "inner" about it!) history geek scream and bounce around for joy. The Vikings pretty much subsisted most of the year on skyr, fish and other dairy products in Iceland. They had some limited types of vegetables (potatoes might be big there now, but they didn't have them in the 9th century - or for some time after the 9th century - obviously) that could be grown, but grain could not be grown there (as it was too cold, even for rye), at least not ever in any quantity, so most if not all of their grain was imported from mainland Europe or the British Isles, and so grain couldn't be as much of a staple of their diet as it was in other parts of Europe. They made bread, beer and porridge out of the grain. Which might be why one of the traditional ways to eat skyr is stirred in equal amounts with porridge. You can take a look at the traditional Icelandic foods listed at wikipedia and see what kinds of fish and meat dishes they ate. I can tell you, I don't think I would want to try most of them ever, even on a dare or if paid. And why they didn't use some of this stuff on Fear Factor, I don't know. 'Cause it's definitely Fear Factor material. Not that I ever watched that show, so maybe they did use some of these things.

Traditionally, skyr keeps well without refrigeration, although, the people who regulate such things in the US recommend refrigeration because there are no preservatives added to it. It does have some sodium, but only that which is naturally occurring in milk.

Skyr came about through innovation and desperation in an environment where everything edible needed to be put to good use. Butter was an excellent way of preserving the fats in milk, and blocks of butter could be and actually were used as a kind of currency (since they were also easy to store, weigh and transport). Viking women would spend a lot of time making heavily salted butter and cheese, which obviously, produced a lot of skim milk and whey. Whey, I'm not sure what they did with it, other than they could have drank it as it was. But the skim milk they could preserve for months at a time very effectively by making it into skyr. And so, they did.

And I finally got to try some today. hee! *blissfully geeked out*

That is all. :D

Sheep!

I looked up info about sheep breeds... (This is what I do, people... research random topics that pop into my head.) Why share the info here? 'Cause it's my blog...

All of these sheep are attractive breeds (none of those sheep that look more like goats or have oddly football-shaped heads). A lot of them have something to do with the Vikings... as in, they owe their existence to them... (I love the Vikings... as if I need to mention that.) The Vikings preferred animals that could pretty much take care of themselves in a cold climate with generally rocky terrain and that did not require shelter for most of the year. This is one of the reasons they never bothered with pigs or chickens. They considered it too much trouble to keep them from turning into pigcicles and chickencicles to be worth keeping. Most of the breeds descended from their domestic animals are fairly independent, self-sufficient, stocky, winter-hardy animals that need little supplementary food and are very easy-care.

Icelandics
- easy to care for, does well on sparse pasture where other breeds would not do well
- very little herding instinct, will wander in small groups
- good mothers
- can be aggressive toward other breeds, will usually dominate
- milk, meat and wool!
- wool very long and low grease
- oldest, purest breed of sheep in the world, unchanged & undiluted for 1100 years (that's when the importation of livestock was cut off.)
- horned (both females and males usually)
- females can lamb as young as 12 months old, and continue until as old as 14
- generally produce 1 - 2 lambs at a time, rarely they can produce as many as 3 - 4 lambs at a time
- males can sire offspring as young as 7 months old
- not a docile breed, can be nervous until acclimated to people and herding animals, but then usually become quite friendly
- seasonal breeding - November to April

Cotswolds
- need extra care while fleece is growing in order to get good fleeces
- wool is less fine than the Leicaster, but finer than the Lincoln
- developed in the 1820s and 1830s to present breed standard (traditional breed completely replaced by an original Cotswold/Lincoln cross to result in better meat production.)

Dartmoors
- produces more wool and eats less for its weight than any other breed
- produce twins 70% of the time
- wool used in tweed fabrics, blankets and carpets
- post-17th cent. breed
- developed from the native Heath or Cornish Sheep, native to Devon
- very winter hardy
- rare breed - currently level 4 of Endangered Breeds on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust List... whatever that means...

Faeroes - not really bred for wool anymore, due to comparatively low yield of fleece and the commercially low price of wool
- primarily bred for meat nowadays
- descended from the Old Norwegian, related to the Icelandic, Shetland and other Scandinavian breeds

Finnsheep
- surprisingly young breed considering it is native to such an isolated country, only going back a few hundred years
- good fleece producers
- few in NA
- currently undergoing "improvement" in Finland through selective breeding (not interbreeding with other breeds to preserve bloodlines)
- from the pics I saw, rather delicate looking... like a ballerina...

Gulf Coasts (aka "Florida Natives")
- native to Florida
- related to Spanish sheep - arrived in 1500s
- naturally developed a degree of resistance to internal parasites
- perfectly adapted to the hot & humid conditions of the Southeast, very hardy in Florida
- medium to long staple length (2.5" - 4") wool quality variable, averaging 26 - 32 micron, grade 48 - 58
- horned and polled (without horns) in males and females
- critically endangered
- because they lived wild for several centuries, were never wormed, had no assistance lambing, and were never shorn, these sheep have developed in such a way that they need no assistance lambing, have very few internal parasitic problems and have relatively light, compact fleeces, open faces and bare legs.
- can be used for dairy
- I want some of these!

Hebridean
- old, but now rare & used most commonly as a decoration on estates
- small
- solid black face and legs
- fleece black, grays with age
- both sexes horned, curled, and they usually have 4!
- wool quality in the 44s - 50s, medium length staple
- browses and forages
- low fat content in their meat

Leicester Longwool
- 18th century breed
- used in "the Colonies" and UK
- very heavy fleeces, sometimes 20+ lbs
- wool 32 - 38 microns
- very rare and endangered - global pop est. at 2,000 animals w/ fewer than 200 new registrations in NA each year
- a favorite of George Washington

Old Norwegian
- one of the oldest domestic breeds in Europe
- closely related to Bronze Age "Soay" breed
- cute with short legs and snout
- pop #s around 10,000 animals
- remains of the breed have been found at Bergen that date to ca 1000 BCE
- all males and 10% of females have horns (although females' horns are small)
- very fine wool, long staple - good for hand knitting and felting
- very strong flocking instinct, can keep flocks as small as 5 - 7 animals without problems
- do not do well with herding dogs - the weak will hide while the strong of the heard will lead the dog away, resulting from their natural reaction to predators; little if any loss of the herd to predators and have practically no need for a dog
- very excellent mothers and lambs will be defended fiercely by the herd
- lambs begin grazing at around 14 days old
- need little if any surplus feeding as long as grazing is present
- love to eat heather
- right now there is a shortage of animals for meat production, so prices are high

Orkney
- eats exclusively seaweed most of the year
- evolved to deal with the harsh conditions of the N. Atlantic
- small, fine boned
- almost entirely open-faced and bare legged
- rams are horned
- wool quality 50 - 56

Rambouillet
- late 18th century/early 19th century breed
- mix of Spanish Merinos and native French stock, with some German
- very fine wool at 18.5 - 24.5 microns, quality range of 60 - 80
- staple length 2" - 4"

Romney
- from Kent, predates 19th century
- quality 40 - 48, 38 - 31 microns
- considered dual use (meat & wool)

Shetland
- date to ca. 850 CE
- smallest British breed, rams weigh 90 - 125 lbs, ewes 75 - 100 lbs
- considered one of the "primitive" or "unimproved" breeds (personally, with wool like this, I don't know why it would need to be "improved"... any breeding with meat stock would probably significantly reduce the quality of the wool... That's what happened with the original Cotswolds when they were crossed with Lincolns.)
- rams are horned
- fine-boned, very short-tailed
- fiber 20 - 25 microns, quality 58 - 62-ish, staple 2" - 4.5"
- very hardy, good mothers, easy lambers, high milk production
- meat is very good, but difficult to produce in quantity
- numbers are slowly rising, there are now approx 2000 breeding ewes in the UK
- calm, docile and easy to manage
- slow growing & long lived
- price ranges from $100 - $300 per animal in US
- I think I'd like a small flock... would be most useful...
- http://www.shetland-sheep.org/

the things I come across...

I was looking for a Viking joke... a really old one that's about as funny today as it was when it was first told 1000 years ago, if you tell it to the right people... You know - ironic, black humor... that shouldn't be funny, but if told right, it is. I found something else though... A quiz to determine what one's Viking name is. Here's mine:

"Herdis Goatflattener (Well, actually, that wouldn't really be your name -- since you're female, your name would be something like "Herdis Bjornsdottir," But this is the twenty-first century, and you want to be known for who you are, not for who your father was, right? Right.) Your Viking Personality: You're a fearsome Viking, but you aren't completely uncivilized. The other Vikings make fun of you for that. You are strong and tireless, frequently shouldering burdens that would tire lesser women. You probably know which end of a sword to hold, but you're not a fearsome fighter by any stretch of the imagination. A long sea voyage aboard a Viking longboat would be difficult for you, but you might be able to manage it. Other Vikings tolerate your presence, though they're not quite sure if they can trust you to fight dirty. You have a fairly pragmatic attitude towards life, and tend not to expend effort in areas where it would be wasted. Other people tend to think of you as manipulative and conniving."

:D Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say "manipulative and conniving." Who do they think I am, a disciple of Loki? I think not... Would love to know the story behind "Goatflattener" though... Also, the "Goatflattener" thing is possible, even if I am female. There was Unn The Deep-Minded afterall... Here's where to go if you want take it too: http://www.thequarter.org/Media/VikingName.php

I eventually found the "joke." It's from Njal's Saga, and is typical of the humor to be found in most of the Sagas.

A band of men who were enemies of a man named Gunnar came to his homestead to slay him. Gunnar saw them coming and, because it was night, used the darkness to conceal himself in a corner of his hall with his ax. The band of men surrounded his home and the leader, Gizur, sent one man, Thorgrim, into the house to find Gunnar. Thorgrim crept around and as he passed by Gunnar, Gunnar hit him in the head with his ax. Thorgrim walked back outside, with the ax still stuck in his head, to where the other men were waiting and Gizur asked, "Well, is Gunnar at home?" And Thorgrim said, "I don't know, but his ax is," then fell over dead.

Don't know if everyone would appreciate that as much as my Viking History class did, but there you go... I think it's how over-the-top it is that does it...