America’s First Yogurt
Icelandic Yogurt is a thousands of year old Viking recipe that until now only survived in Iceland. It fueled the Vikings' adventures and is an integral part of their Sagas. Without it they would not embark on their voyages. Some think of Thor or Brünnhilde while others see Erik the Red crossing the treacherous North Atlantic in a longboat that was powered by both sails and oars that most definitely included Viking Yogurt.
The fact the Vikings ate this yogurt to fuel their greatest adventures including their voyages to America illustrates the special qualities of our recipe. Our discussions with academics (we spoke to quite a few Viking food experts) taught us how to make the yogurt first brought to America on the Viking voyages.
Yogurt predates history and Viking Yogurt was the first yogurt to reach the Americas over 1,000 years ago. The yogurt’s unique qualities meant these brave men and women would not start a voyage without it.
Reading the Viking Sagas, we learned just how important this yogurt was to them. The great Viking Sagas tell how Viking Yogurt had an almost mythical status. Not understanding how the biology of the cultures work, they thought the resulting mysterious thick, tasty, and healthy yogurt had magical properties. Without their yogurt, the Vikings would not dare set off on the great adventures that made them famous. They saw this super food to be as important as their boats in bringing them to strange new lands. Voyages no one had made since the last ice sheets retreated and the land bridge between Asia and America disappeared thousands of years before the domestication of the dairy cow.
The Vikings in their Sagas tell us of the first time when the people of America ate yogurt – their first experience with dairy. Trading dairy and yogurt was so successful it was all the indigenous people would accept in trade from the first Vikings setting foot in North America. In The Saga of Erik the Red and The Saga of the Greenlanders, the exchange of milk and yogurt products is vividly recounted.
The Viking trading outposts only lasted a few decades and it would be another 500 years before Columbus would reach this land. Viking Yogurt, the most well traveled food in history, was soon all but forgotten outside of Iceland.
Today in Iceland yogurt is still the most well known staple in the diet of the one of the healthiest countries in the world. Like their Sagas and legends, Viking Yogurt thrived up until the modern age and once again has left the shores of its native land.
After a thousand years, we are thrilled to be able to bring Viking Icelandic Yogurt back to America for you.
Phil & Therese
