Magical Recipes- An Online course: Food, Potion, and Power in Old Norse & Folk Magic
This one-night, fully practical online workshop is about making two complete, historically grounded Viking recipes from start to finish: a Viking herbal honey bread and a traditional-style Viking mead, prepared live in your own kitchen using simple, accessible ingredients.
By the end of the evening, every participant will have baked a finished loaf of herbal honey bread and begun a real mead preparation that continues fermenting after the session, alongside a clear understanding of why bread, honey, herbs, fermentation, and time were understood as powerful and magical in the Norse and Northern folk world.
In Viking and folk tradition, magic was not abstract. It was kneaded, brewed, heated, tasted, shared, and remembered. Bread and mead sat at the heart of both daily survival and ritual life, carrying meanings of hospitality, protection, abundance, oath-making, and community. Fermentation itself was understood as a living process, something that transformed sweetness into strength through patience and care.
During the session, participants will be guided step by step through the preparation of a historically inspired, kitchen-safe Viking herbal honey bread, using grain, honey, and simple herbs rooted in Northern tradition. Alongside this, participants will learn how to prepare a traditional-style Viking mead using honey, water, and yeast, following principles drawn from historical and archaeological evidence rather than modern commercial recipes. The bread will be fully prepared and baked during the live session, while the mead will be mixed, activated, and set aside to ferment at home.
Alongside the practical cooking and brewing, the workshop explores how these recipes functioned as ritual technologies. Participants will learn how intention was built through timing, repetition, touch, and attention; why kneading, stirring, heating, and spoken words mattered; the symbolic and practical roles of honey, grain, herbs, water, and fermentation; and how food and drink moved fluidly between nourishment, medicine, celebration, and ritual power. The session also addresses how to adapt these techniques responsibly for modern kitchens while respecting historical reality.
All ingredients are non-toxic, food-safe, and easily sourced from ordinary supermarkets. Ingredient lists and clear instructions will be provided in advance.
The workshop is designed as an intimate, hands-on experience. Participants are encouraged to bake and brew along on camera, ask questions, and share their process, though cameras remain optional. No prior baking, brewing, or magical experience is required.
Places are strictly limited to preserve a practical, interactive, and genuinely communal atmosphere.
Come knead. Come brew. Come taste the old magic.
You will leave with warm bread, living mead in the making, and a deeper understanding of how magic once lived in the hearth and the cup.
Participant Preparation
During the Workshop
The bread will be fully prepared and baked live
The mead will be mixed, activated, and set aside to ferment
Fermentation continues at home after the session
Important Notes
No prior baking or brewing experience required
Instructor Bio
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience
This is a participation workshop only, if you are unable to attend please request a refund as this course will not be recorded
