Hi /u/EdGG,

Chicken bones, being small and relatively fragile, often don't make it to the present day. So we don't have much archaeological evidence. However, domestic chickens and geese are mentioned in eddaic poetry (not a sentence I ever expected to type), which is where we get a lot of what we know about Norse mythology. My own sense is that the producers of Vikings did their research pretty well, so that might be where they found this bit of information. For example, if you recall the bit early in Season 1 where everyone spat into the bowl and then washed their faces with it before going off on a raid, that's a direct reference to the writings of one Ibn Fadlan, a 10th-century Arab explorer who traveled extensively among the Vikings in modern-day Russia.

Other animal information: Vikings throughout Scandinavia lured, caught or shot ducks, puffins and ptarmigan and ate their eggs, and exported their feathers. As /u/vc8992 wrote, though, cattle were by far the most important meat animal, followed by sheep, horses, goats and pigs. They knew how to dry, pickle, smoke or salt meat over the winter, and dug small holes in the ground that served as refrigerators for packaged meat. Seal, walrus, bear and reindeer were hunted for food, furs and bone/antler/ivory, some of which would be kept and used and some traded.

Source: The Viking Achievement: A Survey of the Society and Culture of Early Medieval Scandinavia, by Peter G. Foote and David M. Wilson. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970. Print.

I did a short report of the archeological refuse of Viking towns in England. I recall that there were indeed chicken bones a long with everything else you'd expect and some you wouldn't, such as cat and dog bones. Not to say that such animals were eaten on a regular basis. If ever you have Viking questions, first go to the Viking Answer Lady's page, she confirms that there was indeed chickens in the Viking diet. http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/food.shtml

Kristina Jennbert, in Animals and Humans: Recurrent Symbiosis in Archaeology and Old Norse Religion (2011) cites several archaeological finds of chicken bones in Scandinavia, dating back to around the 1st century CE. She argues that chickens were introduced to the Scandinavian diet as a result of trade with Rome.

Several other chicken bone finds are mentioned in the excavation reports from Kaupang (Dagfinn Skre, Kaupang in Skiringssal (2007)). The report also notes the poor preservation of avian bones in the archaeological record (also mentioned by u/Journeyman12 ), which makes it hard to evaluate how common they were.

This suggests that, on this one point at least (I say with a smile and a wink), the history channel got Viking Age material culture right.

I am certainly not an expert, but I have never come across them raising chickens.

Most of my experience on the subject comes from this book.

The following information can all be found in Chapter Seven, Farm, Food Production, and Home Life.

Especially after the Saga Age, Vikings relied more and more on livestock (supplemented, of course, by fishing). Cattle were the most important livestock of this time. In fact, it is no coincidence that fé means both 'cattle' and 'wealth' in Scandinavian. Also important were sheep, used for their meat, fleece, and milk. Goats were also used, along with dogs, horses, and pigs.

The food Vikings ate was primarily meat from their livestock, cereals (mostly barely, rye, and oats), fish and marine mammals, eggs, vegetables and fruit. Nothing in the diet mentioned chickens, specifically.