Detecting Medieval Foodways in the North-eastern Baltic: Fish Consumption and Trade in Towns and Monasteries of Finland and Estonia

ABSTRACT

The beginning of commercial fishing in and around the North Sea is dated to ca. AD 1000, but it only reached the north-eastern Baltic with the Danish and Swedish colonists at the beginning of the 13th century. Their arrival changed the market and also the demand for seafood amongst locals. In this article, the foodways of fish resources, namely the production and consumption of fish, are examined for the medieval period, i.e. the 13th-16th century, in Estonia and Finland. The archaeological material excavated from medieval towns (Turku, Tallinn and Pärnu) and monastic sites (Rauma, Naantali and Padise) is compared in order to ascertain similarities and/or differences in fish processing, consumption and trade. In addition, a 14th-century shipwreck find from Kadriorg, Tallinn, provides unique evidence of fish trade in situ. The processing and consumption of fish are studied through the anatomical distribution of head vs. trunk bones in the zooarchaeological record, which reflects the final product. Thus, preparing and curing fish for trade affects the proportion of skeletal elements present in the final fish product, and thus in the zooarchaeological record. We detected different categories of foodways in our study material: local consumption, products of fresh and preserved fish, fish trade,and local and imported fish.

KEYWORDS:

• Freshwater fish
• marine fish
• fish trade
• consumption
• north-eastern Baltic
• Middle Ages

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Acknowledgements

We thank Eve Rannamäe for valuable comments on the manuscript and Tanja Ratilainen and Kari Uotila for their co-operation in the processing of fish samples from Rauma and Turku. We thank Valdis Bērziņš for English proofreading.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Estonian Research Council (Foreign vs. local in Medieval and Modern Age foodways in the eastern Baltic: tracing the changing food consumption through provenance analyses. PRG29) and the Academy of Finland (BoNe. Borrowing from the neighbour. Animal husbandry methods and cultural contacts in the Northern Baltic Sea region. SA286499).

Notes on contributors

Lembi Lõugas

Lembi Lõugas is a research track associate professor at the Tallinn University and the head of the Archaeological Research Collection department. Lembi's special area of research includes archaeozoology, environmental archaeology and multidisciplinary studies. The animal groups included in her research are mostly those living in the North Europe, both the aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates are in focus.

Auli Bläuer

Auli Bläuer is an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Turku, Finland. Her special area of research is zooarchaeological analysis and multidisciplinary studies, combining osteological material, aDNA studies, isotopic data, and historical sources. Her latest interests include applying archaeological data in the preservation of native animal breeds.