Norwegian Vikings Cultivated Cannabis

Ancient Origins

BY THORNEWS

On a secluded Iron Age farm in Southern Norway, archaeological findings show that it was common to cultivate cannabis in the Viking Age. The question is how the Vikings used the fibers, seeds and oil from this versatile plant.

For more than fifty years, samples from archaeological excavations at Sosteli Iron Age Farm have been stored in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, according to an article on research portal Forskning.no.

Analyses show that in the period between the years 650 and 800 AD, i.e. the beginning of the Viking Age, hemp was cultivated on the remote mountain farm.

1300 years ago, hemp was cultivated on Sosteli Iron Age Farm in Vest-Agder county. (Photo: Morten Teinum / Visit Sørlandet)

This is not the first time that traces of cultivation this far back in time have been found, but Sosteli stands out.

 “In the other cases, it is only made individual findings of pollen grains. Here, it is discovered very much more,” archaeologist and county conservator Frans-Arne Stylegar told forskning.no.

A Hemp field in Brittany, France. Is it from this area the Norsemen imported hemp seeds back to Scandinavia? (Photo: Barbetorte/ Wikimedia Commons)

Sosteli is located much less centrally than other places where similar findings have been made, indicating that cannabis cultivation was common throughout the Viking Age.

 Textiles and Ropes
 Hemp is the same plant as the cannabis plant used for hashish production. It is however uncertain whether the Vikings used cannabis as a drug.

The plant was most likely used for production of textiles and ropes.

Hemp fibre (public domain)

Previously, there have been several findings of hemp seeds in Eastern Norway, including in Hamar municipality, dating back to the 400s AD.

 In the Oseberg ship burial mound, a little leather pouch full of cannabis seeds was found. It belonged to an elderly woman aged between 70 and 80.

The skeleton reveals that she had various health problems – most likely cancer that caused her death – and it is not unlikely that the seeds were used as painkillers.

Scientists do not know if the Vikings used cannabis as a drug, and there are no sources that neither confirm nor deny if they did.

Top image: A cannabis crop (public domain)

The article ‘Norwegian Vikings Cultivated Hemp’ by Thor Lanesskog was originally published on ThorNews and has been republished with permission.

Did people take drugs in Tudor times?

History Extra

It is certainly plausible that drugs may have influenced some of the Bard’s work – A Midsummer Night’s Dream anyone? (Photbo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)

That said, of 24 pipes examined, two had traces of coca plant, which would have been extremely rare in 16th-century Stratford-upon-Avon.
Coca leaves – from which cocaine was first derived in the 19th century – were used as both stimulant and medicine by the Inca of Peru, but the Spanish showed no interest in introducing them to Europe.
More commonly imported was Cannabis sativa, yet this was primarily used to make hemp clothes and rope, rather than joints.
In Elizabethan England, the foremost recreational drugs were actually alcohol and tobacco.
The fact that cannabis and hallucinogenic nutmeg have been found in smoking pipes might suggest people were also getting high, but there are no written sources mentioning such habits.

As for Shakespeare, the evidence is especially suspect – doobie or not doobie, that is the question!


Answered by one of our Q&A experts, Greg Jenner.

Stoner Shakespeare? Scientists say pipes from playwright's garden contain cannabis

 

This engraving of a man identified as William Shakespeare appears on the front of a First Folio of Shakespeare's plays dating from the early 17th century (Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University)

Fox News

Did the greatest playwright the world has ever known have a taste for the wacky tobaccy? Did William Shakespeare have a case of the munchies while penning "Macbeth"?
The answer may very well be "yes" after a group of South African scientists found that clay pipes recovered from the garden of the Bard's home contain traces of cannabis.
The researchers examined fragments of 24 clay pipes that were recovered from the garden of Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, as well as from surrounding houses. After examining the fragments using a gas chromatography technique, the scientists found that eight of the pipes contained traces of cannabis, one contained nicotine, and two contained traces of cocaine derived from Peruvian coca leaves. Four of the pipes containing cannabis came from Shakespeare's property.
Professor Francis Thackeray of the University of Witwatersrand, who headed the study, writes that several kinds of tobacco were known to early 17th-century Englishmen. The earliest specimens of nicotine and coca leaves may have been imported by explorers Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake, respectively.
Thackeray has a longstanding interest in Shakespeare's possible use of drugs. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that in 1999, he wrote an academic paper titled "Hemp as a source of inspiration for Shakespearean literature?"
This may all be much ado about nothing, as there's no conclusive evidence that Shakespeare ever used cannabis himself. However, Thackeray notes that early performances of Shakespeare's works likely took place in smoke-filled rooms full of puffing members of the Elizabethan gentry.

"One can well imagine the scenario in which Shakespeare performed his plays in the court of Queen Elizabeth, in the company of Drake, Raleigh and others who smoked clay pipes filled with 'tobacco'," he writes.
A case of smoke them if you've got them, perhaps?