From honey, water and time comes the oldest intoxicating drink of the North. But mead was more than a drink – it was community, and even poetry.
Mead – fermented honey wine – is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks of humankind and deeply rooted in the North. Long before wine came from the south, mead was the drink of the hall.
The basic recipe is simple: honey is diluted with water, yeast sets off the fermentation, and over time a golden wine forms – dry or sweet depending on the honey. Herbs, berries or spices gave each mead its own character.
In the mead hall, mead was served from drinking horns. Drinking together sealed alliances, honoured guests and commemorated the dead. Yet the Hávamál already warn of moderation.
“Drink from the mead-horn in measure; speak what is useful, or be still.”Hávamál 19, translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)
In myth, mead is even the source of poetry: the mead of the skalds was brewed from the blood of the wise Kvasir; whoever drank of it became a poet. Odin stole it from the giants and brought it to gods and humans. So ‘mead’ became an image of poetry itself.
Cups high and Skál – and always in moderation.