Bere: the Orkney barley growing at Grand Portage

Bere stalks. NPS graphic / G. M. Spoto.

Roman gladiators were nicknamed "barley men", after the grain that fed them. This summer the historic garden at Grand Portage National Monument, on the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, is growing one of barley's oldest living forms: bere (pronounced "bear"), a landrace the farmers of the Orkney Islands kept going for more than a thousand years after most of Europe moved on.

A grain built for short summers

Bere grows well in cold climates near large bodies of water, and it grows fast. That suits Grand Portage exactly: long hours of summer daylight and a short season to use them in.

Bere is also a hulled barley, sown in spring.

Where it came from

Barley was among the first crops farmed in the ancient Near East; its Latin name is Hordeum vulgare, and bere is simply the Scottish word for barley. Viking farmers brought the grain to the British Isles in the ninth century, and over generations it became a crop fitted to the islands' climate and soil. Higher-yielding varieties have since replaced it almost everywhere, and only a few farmers still grow it.

What it was for

Bere was baked into bread, biscuits and bannock, fed to animals, and used for thatch. It also has a long history as a malting grain for beer and whisky, even though its lower carbohydrate content makes two-row barley the better malt.

At Grand Portage, staff hope to grind some of this year's harvest into meal for baking, and to try the things a fur-trade post might have made from it: porridge, a barley broth of the kind trading posts served, and a drink something like lemonade, made from boiled and strained barley water.

Sources

Written from the National Park Service article "Barley Men" (Grand Portage National Monument), a work of the United States government in the public domain.