The Wild Boar from Valhalla to Christmas Kitchen.

IIn this series:

• The Wild Boar from Valhalla to Christmas Kitchen.
• Catering the Medieval and Tudor Christmas Feasts.
• Ordering the Medieval and Tudor Household for Christmas.
• Feasting in the Great Hall on Christmas Day!
• Celebrating the Days of Christmas Before the New Year.

Christmas is upon us.  A busy season of preparations for table and hall even more so.  So then, let us go hunt our wild boar starting deep in the thickets of history.  In Medieval and Tudor times the well-appointed table must feature the boar’s head at its center. 

The Eddas and Sagas of the Norse Men are filled with references to the wild boar.  They were deeply impressed by its courage and ferocity.  A boar’s head was mounted above the main gate to Valhalla, great hall of Odin.

The dwarves of Svartálfaheimr gave the Norse sun god, Frey, the golden-bristled boar Gullinbursti (golden-bristled),[1] a personification of the sun that carried his chariot through the sky instead of the flying steeds of his cousin Apollo.  He seems to have skipped the chariot, at times, and ridden directly on the boar’s (i.e. sun’s) back.  It is this pedigree that placed the wild boar at the center of the table for pre-Christian Norse celebrations of the winter solstice.

Those fallen in battle feasted in Valhalla after an heroic death treated to the flesh of the boar Saehrimner.[2]  Saehrimner came back to life each day to serve as the main course for these hoards, having returned from reliving their glorious feats.  The beast, cooked by Andhrimner, in the great kettle Eldhrimner,[3] in the kitchens of the great hall, was a symbol of plenty.  Frey and his sister Freya were the gods of plenty, as well, in later variations on the Norse myths.

Wild boar was a favorite dish among mortal men, as well.  Aware of its role at Valhalla, it was also a dish especially to honor heroism, the highest warrior values.  While the Norman contingent of the Norse races adopted Christianity earnestly and earlier than most, they still remained every  bit as dedicated to their warrior values.  They were fierce warriors and pious Christians.  The boar remained the dish of honor meant only to be placed before spotless warriors.

The ancient English, too, greatly honored the boar, but the details are not as clear.  The 1^st Century A.D. Iceni frequently featured wild boar on their coins.  Rollo, the Norse chieftain who had been exiled from Norway, in the 9^th century, spent considerable time in Scotland and Saxon England before he received the French region we now call “Normandy” in exchange for an end to raiding and fealty to the French crown.  Other Norse groups also spent much of their time in England.  The Saxon infatuation with the  wild boar began at least as early as this.

Edward the Confessor is said to have hunted wild boar in the royal forest of Bernwood.  William the Conqueror established draconian penalties for the unauthorized killing of a boar.[4]

Perhaps the earliest record of the boar being served as a ceremonial dish is of the English King Henry II personally serving the boar’s head to his son, Henry Fitzhenry, on a platter, in 1170, on the occasion of naming him “co-regent”.  It was a traditional act honoring a cherished son and spotless warrior.  The two remained Normans — Norse men.

By Tudor times, when we begin to find documents that describe the already historical importance of the boar for upper class Christmas dinners, and the traditions that went with them, its population was small.  Only a few English forests existed in which to hunt it.  Wild boar was not readily available.  The tusked beast on the Christmas platters of  those who could afford it may well have been shipped from Scotland or Europe.

In fact, the popular English text of the time on hunting the boar — The Arte of Venerie (1575), alternately attributed to George Tuberville and George Gascoigne — was actually a translation of Jacques du Fouilloux’s 1568 La Venerie.  Even the specialized terms of the boar hunt are translations from Fouilloux’s work suggesting that there were no social boar hunts any longer in England. It would appear that an English nobleman who wished still to hunt the boar, as a rite of passage, generally did so in Europe.

Harting provides a citation I borrow here to show that Shakespeare himself verifies the situation. ‘In olden times the enclosure in which the Boars used to be fattened was termed a "Boar-frank." Shakespeare uses the word in the Second Part of Henry IV.:

Doth the old boar feed in the old frank?’[5]

The Bard’s works show that he was intimately familiar with the methods of all of the noble hunting sports of his time — but not boar hunting.  When the boar's domain is not myth or escutcheon, it is mentioned as an animal kept in a fattening-pen.

By the reign of Charles I, a population of boar was imported into England in an attempt to reintroduce the royal beast.  The population grew rapidly and wild boars were soon considered a dangerous nuisance.  The nuisance was ended, for all practical purposes, when the last of that population was killed during the English Civil War.[6]

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[1] Guerber, H. A. Myths of the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sagas (1908). 66.

And now, strange to tell, from the roaring fire

Came the golden-haired Gullinbörst,

To serve as a charger the sun-god Frey,

Sure, of all wild boars this the first.

               The Dwarf, Oehlenschläger (Pigott's tr.).

[2] Ibid., 20.

All the chosen guests of Odin

Daily ply the trade of war;

From the fields of festal fight

Swift they ride in gleaming arms,

And gaily, at the board of gods,

Quaff the cup of sparkling ale

And eat Saehrimni's vaunted flesh.

               Vasthrudni's-mal (W. Taylor's tr.).

[3] Norse Mythology: Or the Religion of Our Forefathers (1891). 263.  Citing Elder Edda.

[4] Harting, James Edmund, “The Survival and Destruction of British Animals”, Edinburgh Review,  Volume 188 (1898). 221-251@234.

[5] Harting, James Edmund, British Animals Extinct within Historic Times (1880). 96.  The citation is 2 Henry IV, II.ii.

[6] Harting, Edinburgh, 234-5.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

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• Malvolio’s Crow's Feet and “the new Mappe”. October 14, 2019. “Percy Allen’s candidate is not mentioned by any of these parties. The traditionalists, of course, could not consider it possible because it would suggest far too early a date for the play.”
• Who Saved Southampton from the Ax? September 2, 2019.  “One of the popular mysteries of the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I is why the Queen executed her favorite, the Earl of Essex, for treason, and left his accomplice, the Earl of Southampton, to languish as a prisoner in The Tower until King James I ascended the throne.”
• What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes? July 27, 2019. “By the year 1599-1600, when Shakespeare’s play would seem to have been written, the potato was available in London.  It was considered a delectable treat and an aphrodisiac.”
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.