Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of berries around. You can pick 10 L of blueberries in not too many man-hours, the same goes for cloud berries. Lingon berries are also abundant for that matter.
As mentioned, they definitely had these things as part of their diet, but it was nowhere near being a primary calorie source. The reason for that is probably that fishing or harvesting seagull eggs was a much, much more efficient way to get the calories you need. When you’re already sustenance farming, you typically maximise efficiency when possible. My primary point was really that when maximising calorie-efficiency (which they largely did) you end up living primarily off boiled fish and boiled potatoes.
I see you’ve all already had the discussion but my point wasn’t really to say that they were the main source of calories or something. But a small part of the diet can still make an important contribution to nutrition, particularly when it comes to vitamins.
Aye, this makes sense. You can pickle fish just as easily as you can create berry preserves, and ultimately the goal is to have enough calories around to get you through winter, the more efficiently you spend your time the better I suppose.
Preserving fish is great! You can salt it, dry it, ferment it, smoke it, pickle it, soak it in lye (we have a dedicated word for that), aand that’s about it :D
Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of berries around. You can pick 10 L of blueberries in not too many man-hours, the same goes for cloud berries. Lingon berries are also abundant for that matter.
As mentioned, they definitely had these things as part of their diet, but it was nowhere near being a primary calorie source. The reason for that is probably that fishing or harvesting seagull eggs was a much, much more efficient way to get the calories you need. When you’re already sustenance farming, you typically maximise efficiency when possible. My primary point was really that when maximising calorie-efficiency (which they largely did) you end up living primarily off boiled fish and boiled potatoes.
I see you’ve all already had the discussion but my point wasn’t really to say that they were the main source of calories or something. But a small part of the diet can still make an important contribution to nutrition, particularly when it comes to vitamins.
Oh, that’s definitely true! I was honestly surprised at how much response I got to what was initially meant as a semi-joke :)
Aye, this makes sense. You can pickle fish just as easily as you can create berry preserves, and ultimately the goal is to have enough calories around to get you through winter, the more efficiently you spend your time the better I suppose.
Preserving fish is great! You can salt it, dry it, ferment it, smoke it, pickle it, soak it in lye (we have a dedicated word for that), aand that’s about it :D