this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Significant point: "Edible" is subject to discussion. Not more than 100 years ago, the expected diet in large parts of Norway was boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain. For every meal. Your entire life. Vitamins? Go chew on that shrub until the scurvy goes away.
I doubt it. In winter maybe. But given the extreme abundance of wild berries in the summer I'm pretty sure people ate a lot of them.
Source: Grandparents that grew up on a plot of land (read: hunk of rock) on the west coast and lived off sustenance farming (which includes a significant amount of fishing) as late as the 1930's.
Sure, berries and some other foraging products was part of their diet, but not a very significant one. It was mostly whatever would grow on that plot. Mostly potatoes and onions, with some other minor stuff. While berries are abundant, picking them gives you a lot fewer calories per man-hour than fishing, so fishing takes priority.
You don't need a lot of fruit to not get scurvy, though. I bet even just the boiled potatoes have enough vitamin C left to keep it away, the age-of-sail sailor diet was complete garbage even by the standards of the time.
I believe I've read that potato's were, for a significant period of time, the average Norwegians primary source of vitamin C. Not because it contains loads of vitamin C, but because people ate them by the boatload. (Don't peel them, that gives you scurvy)
I would've thought there were at least lingonberries over there? Lingon preserves have been around and ubiquitous enough since at least around the 1600s here in Sweden. In addition to that, off the top of my head there's also blueberries, juniper, and at some point rose hips were introduced. Depending on where you are you could harvest cloudberries. In late spring/early summer you could harvest pine needles, as well as young pine cones.
In some part of China (Yunnan I think, but I could be wrong) they also harvest pine pollen, though I've not heard of that practise around here.
Granted, the ecology is decently different between Sweden and Norway, if they actually lived on a hunk of rock with no forest in sight I'd assume it'd be hard to get berries.
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
tbf that sounds amazing
Nobody stops you from trying it you can afford it, I hope you can it's pretty sad otherwise
i eat it almost every day, that's why i can say with confidence that it sounds amazing, because it is :P