Paper Short Abstract:

The key questions of this paper are: What lessons can we learn about multispecies relations from skyr-making and about how such relations have been cultivated over time? And, how can the multispecies practices inherent in the making of skyr deepen our understanding of biocultural heritage?

Paper Abstract:

The focus of the proposed paper is a traditional Icelandic food item: the fermented dairy product skyr. Skyr is produced by fermentation, through which live microbial cultures curdle skim milk. In the past, differences in microbial cultures, production methods and equipment meant that the taste and texture of skyr varied between regions and households, taking local flavor from the microbiomes of the farm, the dairy, the containers, the animals, and the humans involved in making it. The past 50-100 years, however, have seen the steady depletion of this biocultural diversity.

Traditional fermentation methods and their products are prime examples of biocultural heritage, ecosystems that are the result of long-term biological and social relationships between humans, other animals, plants, soils, and microbes. Skyr might thus also be defined as an ecosystem created and sustained by relations between Streptococcus and Lactobacillus bacteria, various yeast species, mammals such as cows, sheep, or goats, their pastures and soils, as well as the humans who tend to them and eat them.

Fermentation is a collaborative task undertaken by these collectives but may also be seen as a form of communication between multiple species, one that involves not only sight and sound but also (and even more so) smell, taste, touch, and thermoception (the sense of heat). The proposed paper will bring an ethnological approach to skyr as biocultural heritage, using sensory ethnography and archival research to understand fermentation as multispecies communication between the human and non-human actors involved in making skyr.