The Vikings were a fantastic people, but living was very hard for them. Annually, many Vikings died from influenza, or starved to death as a result of food spoilage or inadequate food stores to last through the extended, hard winters. The Vikings used their life style to these winters. The “longhouse” was “long” since it had been easier to cut down a whole tree and move it into a extended, key fireplace pit, than to chop it into logs. Is sensible, doesn’t it?
Citizens of the longhouse had “sleeping cupboards” and long open benches along the edges of the longhouse. In cold weather, couples closed themselves up inside their sleeping cupboards – a loft form area with gates that closed – to achieve heat from another’s body heat. There is small solitude of course, but physical closeness was regarded a routine part of everyday life viking axes .
In the kitchen of a Viking longhouse, meals such as for instance yogurt, wheat, and dried fish were located in barrels buried in to the ground and included with wooden tops that have been floor-level. The coldness of the ground helped to protect the foodstuff, and being in the ground, significantly room was conserved in the kitchen. An issue many early persons had was getting food to last on the winter. What does one do with a big mammoth, for instance? It can’t be eaten all at once.
The Vikings had an unusual answer: They dragged the mammoth into a lake or pond, and measured it down so that it remained on the underside of the lake. The water temperature and the ice above preserved the meat until spring, when it was presented and roasted for a massive celebration. The normal landscape of the Vikings – rugged lands, high mountains and fjords, and extended winters – produced agriculture a challenge.