Slash and burn... a field. Popularity of rye bread explained

Land cultivation was people's main source of sustenance in the Viking age. In the south of Estonia animal husbandry and fishing were also popular. We learn about agriculture mostly from the remains of fields and crops. In northern and westerns parts of Estonia the soil was full of limestone. Archaeologists recognize the shape and size of fields by the heaps of stones that were removed from the fields, and by the baulks that separated one plot of land from another.

People used mainly the "slash and burn technique" to cultivate the land. Plants and forests were first slashed, left for a while and then burnt to create fields. A family exploited the soil to the maximum and then the field would be abandoned for a newly cleared one. Plants would be permitted to grow on the previous one until another family uses it several years later. The slash and burn technique drastically reduced the area of forests in Northern Europe.

Permanent fields ("strip fields") appeared first during the Viking age in Estonia. In contrast to fields which were cultivated with the slash and burn technique, stationary farming meant permanent land ownership and in a long run, development of villages. Moreover, further growth in population required more effective ways of land cultivation, which in practice meant increasing the extent of permanent fields and reducing slash-and-burn shifting cultivation.

The main cultivated plant throughout the Viking Age was barley. Finds of grain in Estonia also include wheat. Rye began to be cultivated in about the 6th century, and this can be considered to be the most important change in agriculture in the period under review. Rye grew as weed on wheat and barley but as it was very frost-resistant, soon it became cultivated as a separate crop.

There is also a parallel explanation to why rye became so widespread in the North. "It is possible that the spread of rye cultivation was accelerated by the climatic catastrophe of AD 536, as the latter may have caused both barley and wheat crops in fields to fail, while rye, as a less demanding cereal, at least produced seed grain. It may have been as a result of this that pure rye seed was first obtained over an extensive area." (Tvauri, 2012).

There is also evidence of the cultivation of oats, peas, broad beans, and the fibre plants flax and hemp (used as raw material for ropes and seeds as food).

Today in Estonia rye bread is considered a part of Estonians' identity and symbol of their national cuisine.

Rye bread in my kitchen.