UnReal World > Modding

First Mod: Seafood

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run37:
Today's lesson: Plant Limits. After going on a plant and not-really-a-plant creating spree today (beyond just seafood), I realized there is a limit on the number of plants/new items you can create--thought first I spent about 20 minutes troubleshooting and checking for typos, hah. The create_object file is my new best friend.

So it looks like I need to scale back my ambitions. Sorry "northern clams," you're just going to have to make do as "clams". And now I'm looking askance at arrows, which are taking up nine items slots in the game.

After cutting out a ton of stuff, I think I'll be able to still have all of the following:

Misc: Oyster, Seaweed, Mussels, Clams, Crabs, Snails, Frogs, Iron Slick, Peat Deposit, Clay Bank, Beehive
Berries: Nightshade, Holly, Elderberry, Rose Hips, Mountain Crowberry, Whortleberry, Arctic bramble,
Plants: Carrot, Cabbage, Onion, Deer Moss, Wild Garlic, Wolfsbane, Fennel, Ghost Pipe, Henbane, Mandrake, Hemlock, Clover, Foxglove, Mustard, Sage, Wild Celery

That should be...enough.

PALU:
If you're looking for realism, you may want to check up whether those things were actually available in the area at the time. Someone corrected me when I thought carrots should be available: apparently they're a recent (historically speaking) import from the much further south (northern Africa?). I have a feeling mustard likewise is a later arrival, and would take a closer look at a number of the others.

run37:
I didn't know that about carrots; thanks! The historical accuracy question is super interesting. I started off wanting my list of new stuff to be really historically accurate, but then ran into two  issues: (a) a bunch of plants/animal species don't have information available in English about whether they're native to iron age Finland, and (b) history is sometimes weirder than what I want for a fantasy simulation of an era.
(Pulling from this paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21662282.2012.750445)

Example: Henbane - not native to scandanavia, but found there during the iron-age (and possibly used for something as culturally important as the berserker trance-rages). But unclear when it was a cultivated plant vs. something 'growing in the forest.'

Sage: A burning stick of sage is now fairly iconic as a protective talisman.  But if it was around iron-age Finland, it was likely a garden herb and used mostly for flavor, not ritual purposes.

Hops! "For a long time, it was assumed that only beer flavoured with sweet gale was brewed in southern Scandinavia and that hop-flavoured beer did not make its entry until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Karg and Günther 2002)."
So I could include hop, but I was sort of excited about reading up on how ale was made sans-hops, so I think I'll still leave it out for myself.

Lastly: Kale. Species of kale are present in iron-age Scandanavia, but I just can't bring myself to name something "kale" in the game, since *I* didn't even know it existed until about 5-10 years ago. It has too much of a contemporary 'vibe' to me.

So at this point, I'm going for accurate-ish mixed in with plants I know and plants whose names I think are cool (e.g. ghost pipe--which is weird little plant).

Further reflection on flora and culture: Some sources suggest that the Roman Empire, and then later Christian and Muslim traders, had a significant impact on Scandanavia in terms of introducing new herbs/plants/food/etc. So by iron-age time people in Southern Finland (at least) could have being gardening with a bunch of plants that weren't "local" and that probably wouldn't have survived the local climate on their own. So this raises the whole question of what's "authentic" to iron-age Finland. And already, I gave up early on "Finland" because of lack of info and expanded it to Scandanavia/Northern Europe.

*Bonus discussion: It's weird to think about Arab merchants travelling this far north in the 900s, but they did, and apparently they had opinions: "An Arab merchant visiting Hereby, Denmark, in the 10th century had this to say about the Viking's singing: "Never before I have heard uglier songs than those of the Vikings in Slesvig (in Denmark). The growling sound coming from their throats reminds me of dogs howling, only more untamed."" (I bet he was fun at parties.) (http://www.viking.no/e/life/music/e-musikk-mogens.html)
Alternative: https://www.thenational.ae/world/when-the-arabs-met-the-vikings-new-discovery-suggests-ancient-links-1.125718
**Super Bonus: Same Arab dude also thought the Norse were beef-cakes: "I have never seen more perfect physiques than theirs" (http://www.icenews.is/2017/03/15/arabic-sources-describe-the-vikings-as-beautiful-but-filthy/)
***Triple Bonus: Oh right, and some of the Norse may have made slaves kill themselves when their masters died. I recently read something similar about the Tlingit tribe in Alaska. Super interesting culture. Some of them may have also killed slaves when someone important died. I'm getting the sense that this was a somewhat common thing across various cultures. (Look at me: I'm so rich I can kill my slaves when I die and it won't hurt my family economically; we'll just fight someone and get more.) Fun. (by which I mean, not fun: actual people/societies in actual history were the worst.)

caethan:
Keep in mind that "Scandinavia", especially Southern Scandinavia (i.e., Denmark and southern Sweden) have and had different climates and especially cultures than Finland.  Although I agree, it's been hard to find sources in English on food culture in medieval Finland.  There's an interesting webpage here:  http://www.katajahovi.org/en/ironage.html in English by a woman who's written a whole book on the subject - but in Finnish, which I can't read.  It's called Keskiajan maut, available for 40 euros here: https://kauppa.tietosanoma.fi/9789518845457 . She's looking for an English translator, if anyone wants to volunteer.  I've been tempted to just buy it and do the best I can with Google Translate, since what I can see looks super interesting.

Among other things, that page suggests:  inexplicably no cabbage in Finland, though it was a staple of the Norse diet, no fruits other than berries and wild apples and no alliums other than chives, meaning no garlic or onions.

This is another interesting page on medieval cookery, this time specific to Norsemen, so not quite right but at least interesting: http://www.hurstwic.com/history/articles/daily_living/text/food_and_diet.htm

ModernNorseman:
As a Dane myself, I can concur that there is quite regional differences between Denmark and Finland as to what grows where. One of the plants I've added myself in my game, has been ramsons, which has a distinct flavor as a spice, since it tastes more or less like garlic.

One thing that always wondered me, and I have no clue about - wouldn't apples have been a natural plant in Finland at these times? As for what I could read, it's been very widespread in Europe even back then.

Very interesting topic by the way :)

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