Kind: captions
Language: en
when I was in the Lofoten Islands in
northern Norway
I came across one of the strangest
sights I have ever seen
cod hundreds of thousands of them strung
up on racks their stench blanketing
entire villages
this annual massacre has been going on
for over a thousand years and it may be
the very reason the Vikings existed the
poles of our planet are hostile to life
especially human life in the time before
modern comforts not only are the winters
long and cold they are also dark and
that is important as humans migrated
north across Europe a strange illness
emerged it especially affected children
their bones grew soft and deformed some
died others were painfully disfigured
for life the condition became known as
rickets in children and osteomalacia in
adults from studies of bones we know it
was prevalent as early as the Roman
Empire but likely much earlier and
doctors were powerless to cure the
disease because no one knew what caused
it
scientific evidence only came to light
in the early 1920s during an experiment
in Vienna it was discovered that
children with rickets recovered
miraculously after they were regularly
allowed to play outside on a balcony
scientists realized without fully
understanding why that sunlight is
essential for the development of healthy
human bones today we understand what's
happening is ultraviolet light from the
Sun stretched cholesterol molecules just
under the surface of our skin and it
activates them to become vitamin D this
vitamin D is essential for observing the
calcium necessary to form strong healthy
bones but north of 42 degrees latitude
there isn't enough Sun in the winter
months to form any vitamin D hence the
epidemic of rickets
the notable exception here is the
Vikings they occupied what is now
Denmark Norway and Sweden well north of
the 42nd parallel and yet they had a
reputation for being an imposing
fighting force over 1,200 years ago they
raided towns all along the coasts of
Europe they laid siege to Paris the
Vikings were intrepid sailors voyaging
out across the seas establishing
colonies in Iceland and Greenland they
even reached North America the first
Europeans to do so 500 years before
Christopher Columbus so why were they
overcome by the debilitating illness of
rickets well because although
Scandinavia is cursed with a lack of
sunlight the Cure is swimming just
offshore that's right cod
ah
that is one big fish this fish was an
essential food source but even more than
that it was a source of vitamin D in the
oily flesh and particularly in the
fish's liver just one meal of cod with
liver and eggs supplies enough vitamin D
to last you a month and your body can
store it because vitamin D is fat
soluble to survive the dark winter
months and to build strong healthy bones
and children cod was essential
so we're the Vikings just lucky I mean
they lived in a part of the world that
is virtually uninhabitable due to its
lack of sunlight if not for the cod
without cod they're likely never would
have been a large thriving population of
warriors in Northern Europe so is cod
the only reason we still know about the
Vikings did Cod innocence create the
Vikings well I think it's more
complicated than that
the Vikings figured out how to use the
cod to promote better health one
practice they passed down from
generation to generation was extracting
oil from the Cod's livers the part of
the cod that is richest in vitamin D so
what's this science I mean I think it's
tempting to think the Vikings figured
out something that remained a mystery to
modern medicine for over a millennium
but I think it probably went something
like this maybe some people noticed that
cod liver oil drinkers were healthier or
their children taller sturdier than
those living further inland and so the
cultural practice of drinking cod liver
oil spread like evolution but for ideas
humans living together observing one
another and emulating what works is a
kind of proto science it's like running
numerous uncontrolled experiments but
carried out over a whole population for
generations some of what comes out of
that is likely to have a basis in truth
and the culture served as the memory of
the population of people this is
essential because life is complicated
there are so many different things in
nature and so many interactions that
have to encounter each one anew would be
chaotic and overwhelming we are able to
function in the world because of the
knowledge handed down to us both
explicitly but also implicitly by way of
our culture
tradition can be a way of encoding
knowledge a way for us to build on those
who came before especially in a time
before systemic teaching or books
the Vikings clearly understood the cod
and cod liver oil were beneficial but
not exactly how beneficial or why in the
Greenland Viking settlement that
cultural knowledge was apparently
forgotten there the Viking settlers
turned to farming as their main source
of subsistence and without as much Cod
in their diets the lack of vitamin D was
crippling literally exhumed bones
revealed that among genetic deformities
there are the tell-tale signs of rickets
spine curvature deformation of arms and
legs and narrowed pelvis and overall
bone deformation and fractures the
greenland colony vanished about 500
years ago and vitamin D deficiency was
one of the likely causes if the Vikings
had a scientific understanding of how
important cod and cod liver oil was to
their survival they never would have
stopped taking it in the absence of
science traditional knowledge is often
the best place to start
in fact cod liver oil was actually the
substance in which the first vitamin was
scientifically identified vitamin A and
later the fourth vitamin D the cultural
knowledge is also not science
there are harmful practices like
bloodletting mixed in with the helpful
ones and without knowledge of clear
cause-and-effect the importance of some
practices like taking the cod liver oil
can be forgotten it was the British who
realized through the first known
randomized control trial that citrus
fruits cure scurvy and as a result it
was their fleet rather than say the
Vikings it came to dominate the seas
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I would argue that the scientific method
is the greatest technology humans have
ever developed it allows us to
understand not only what works but why
it works and with that knowledge our
future is determined not by luck but by
our ability to manipulate reality to our
advantage this video was made with
excerpts from my feature-length
documentary vitae mania so if you want
to watch it for a couple bucks click
this link to find out how I want to say
a huge thank you to our funding partners
and to gene pool productions with whom I
made this film vitae mania it's all
about the sense and nonsense of vitamins
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