Milk and mead

Bjorn woke up with a throbbing head-ache. The blurry figure that kept poking him seemed to be saying something about the cow. Probably that it needed milking. Which meant it was somewhere about the sixth hour of the morning. Heck, he’d only stumbled back to his hut a few hours after midnight.

He closed his eyes again. He was back in the longhouse, the fires roaring, and his drinking horn full of spiced mead. He took a deep swig and proceeded to tell the man seated next to him a dirty joke about the chieftain’s daughter, evoking raucous laughter all around. Spirits were high, the chief and his warriors had just returned from their latest raid on the coastlines further south. The spoils had been rich and bountiful. He’d returned with more gold, silver, and fine garments than most men could dream of, as well as enough costly gems and jewellery to keep most of the womenfolk happy. But the best part of the spoils was the food: smoked hams, fine European wines, and barrels of salted cabbage, among others. Bjorn wasn’t so keen on the cabbage, the chief could keep that, but he wasn’t going to miss his share of the other delicacies. Somehow, though, it wasn’t the fine food that Bjorn enjoyed most, but the traditional Viking feast that came after. Juicy, spit-roast boars and partridge, cooked over the open flame, and as much mulled, spicy mead as a man could possibly drink. A little tipsy after so much fine drink, Bjorn had grabbed a whole leg of boar and begun to devour it ravenously.

Here his memory slipped, what had happened next? He couldn’t remember. The next thing he recalled was a scene of drunken chaos. Even the chief had had too much to drink and lost all sense of reality. The womenfolk had long since left the longhouse, the men became dangerous when they got like this. Bjorn and a couple of his comrades that had been seated next to him had got up on the long table in the middle of the hut and were dancing a drunken jig, while loudly singing a song with little or no regard for their neighbours. Numerous similar scenes were in progress along the length of the hut. There were puddles of spilt mead and piles of carelessly discarded meat scraps everywhere. The village dogs were having a feast of their own under the tables, and every once in a while there would be a painful shout as a drunken reveller stepped on a tail and got bitten for his pains. Eventually, the party broke up, the men drifting back to their family huts in twos and threes. By Thor and Odin, what a night!

And now for the cow. “The cow? What was the point in a cow anyway?” he wondered as he drifted off again, “Cheese would be so much nicer if it were made with mead….”