How important was cattle or other livestock in the diet and culture of "Vikings", and what were their cattle breeds like?

by [deleted]

By "vikings" I obviously mean it in the broad sense: Scandinavians between 500AD and 1000AD.

  • Was most of their diet meat or dairy based? Would you say the ratio of meat or dairy higher than, say, France?

  • Does it sounds likely they consumed more protein as in, say, France, and would that mean they were bigger or stronger? Could this have played a role? (I know one major reason of their military success was good quality sword-smithing, but it never hurts for a soldier to be strong either.)

  • Did cattle play a role in culture or religion, say, a bull god, a cowboy god, cow goddess, cattle-related cultural customs, or sacrificing cow to the gods?

  • What were their cattle breeds like as in, dairy or meat breeds, size, etc. ? Were they recreated? Were they largely able to deal with spending the winter outdoors or required a barn? Were they immune to the mad cow disease similarly to the Hungarian Gray Cattle?

Thank you in advance.

Reason for asking: Nick Szabo argues that drinking milk played a big role in European history here: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/lactase-persistence-and-quasi.html

goldenrooste

Was most of their diet meat or dairy based? Would you say the ratio of meat or dairy higher than, say, France?

As far as meat goes yes, basically:

Crappy Viking homeland soil + Coastline rich in fishies and other sea-genic delights + Extensive wilderness with plenty of undisturbed game = Diet higher in meats(fishies or from hunting in the vast wilderness: http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/food_and_diet.htm) than french(had a primarily carb based diet: http://people.eku.edu/resorc/Medieval_peasant_diet.htm)

Meat for people that weren't rich in most of Western Europe was hard to come by on a consistant basis, so they could totally enjoy meat on a special occassion, but not extremely often like the nobility.

The thing is, the crappy soil in Viking-land led to lower populations there than say more arable lands like France which was able to supplement additional babies with the often vast outputs given off by extensive grain farming.

But the "vikings" so to say, did have bread