Loki at the table

Saga-age Scandinavians took two main meals: dagmál (“day-meal”), eaten mid-morning after the first chores, and náttmál (“night-meal”) in the evening. Daily fare: barley porridge, flatbread, salted fish, sour dairy (skyr). On feast days, a veizla (banquet) was held in the great hall (hǫll), where mead flowed in drinking horns and meat boiled in the large cauldron. No starter/main/dessert: everything arrives together on the trestle table, and each person serves themselves with a knife.

Two markers of the Norse table linked to Loki: salmon (the animal form he takes to flee the Æsir) and the mead brewed by the giant Ægir, setting for the famous flyting (Lokasenna). Honey and freshwater fish structure the entire cuisine of the North before salt and smoke preservation.