One of the Facebook pages I follow just gave me a major breakthrough! In a discussion on food for travellers, someone casually mentioned sausages, which led to documentation for horn sausage stuffers (korvstoppningshorn in Swedish, or stuffing horn).
The first reference was from A.W. Mårtensson (Ed.) Uppgrävt förflutet för PKbanken i Lund (Archaeologica Lundensia VII). Kulturhistoriska Museet: Lund 1976, page 239. It appears to be from about AD 1000.
The second piece of evidence is from Malmo Museum, object number GT001613. These appear to be more modern, but I can’t find any info on the items. They can be found at the website http://carlotta.malmo.se/carlotta-mmus/web/object/1937.
The final piece of today’s puzzle is the reference to kettle worms (black sausages) in Kormac’s Saga (http://www.sagadb.org/kormaks_saga.en).
But how do they know that these are what they were for?
LikeLike
I think it’s by working backward from what we know. Stuffing horns are still used for stuffing sausages. Modern ones are made of metal or plastic. If the ones from Malmo were identified as stuffing horns one or two hundred years ago (and possibly the trail goes back even further, but I can’t confirm as I don’t know Swedish), and the one from 1,000 years ago was found in a context that would make sense as a cooking utensil, it’s a reasonable guess. We know they had sausages from the sagas, and I know from personal experience that stuffing sausages without some sort of stuffer is very difficult. Therefore, if something that is made exactly the same way as an item more recently identified as a stuffing horn, and it is found where a stuffing was likely to have been used, odds are reasonably good it is a stuffing horn. It might not be, but I have to assume that the archaologists wouldn’t have labeled it a stuffing horn if they thought there was a more plausible use for it.
LikeLike
Makes sense. Thank you.
LikeLike