*This is the first (and so far only) essay I've ever written that directly centers scatological humor, so...
you have officially been warned.*
In 1937, historians were excavating a manor house in the city of Aalborg, in northern Denmark, when they discovered a box. Not just any box: a BOX BELONGING TO A BISHOP from 300 years ago. And not just any box belonging to a Bishop from 300 years ago, a box that contained his daily personal...brown tithings, shall we say...his prayerful pellets...his heavenly hershey squirts --I’m talking about his shit.
The Danish manor being excavated belonged to Bishop Yens Bircherod (who lived from 1658-1708), so the whole site and everything in it is centuries old. Including this box, and inside this box, perfectly preserved lumps of the Bishop's holy hot snakes. And for soooome reason, everything else that was discovered at the site during that 1937 dig was catalogued and studied, and that lonely lil’ shit box just sat in cold storage, untouched by human hands--or cheeks--until late November 2016.
BUT(T)! Once scientists got elbow deep in there, and cracked off several shards of semi-fossilized feces, they found to their delight, that it contained piles of valuable data. Valuable because normally any latrine in a given household from that time period has multiple users, but this one was the Bishop's private dropbox, kn'amean? So all the biological info was coming from the same leather cheerio.
It's as close to a "controlled environment" as you can get for 300 year old shit, which makes it historically & ethnographically significant. Each little dookie was a gift from the past, a perfectly packed parcel deposited by the most blessed loaf pincher in the manor, thanks be to God.
And from these humble bundles, sprang knowledge heretofore unknown about our friend, Bishop Yens Bircherod and the city he resided in. For One: He was a bomb-ass foodie!
The usual staples of the Danish diet back then were cabbage, pork and rye bread. Not so for our holy homeboy. There were traces of buckwheat, a local specialty, sure, but also spices, berries, nuts and fruits that his neighbors didn’t have access to. Scientists not only identified super rare and fancy foods in his clergy clumps they found matching entries in his diaries where he talks about the dope food he ate, so we know:
- what he ate,
-when he ate it,
-and within a 24 hour window of that, we know when his mortal prison was done with the meal, and pushed out some miracle marbles!
WHO'S GOT TWO FINGERS AND KEEPS A FOOD DIARY IN THE 1600’s?? Ah-this son of Christ. *makes cross sign with two fingers*
But hold up, how’d he get that fancy food? Our boy Yens was born smack in the middle of Denmark’s second war in a row with Sweden, which was a total disaster for his country. Luckily for them Sweden’s king dropped dead in the middle of planning an invasion and everyone made peace in the Treaty of Copenhagen. Awesome.
But the war had ravaged Denmark. Nobles had to give up some of their power and yield exemptions from taxes and fees to help build the nation back up again. They were not in very good shape.
Unlike the Dutch East India company, which was rich as fuck and ushering the Netherlands into the a "Golden Age",
The Danish East India Company was a nightmare. Ships packed with silver sunk, and war decimated all the valuable trade holdings the company had except for one satellite port city. Trade was an absolute shitshow!
But Yens, our Sacred Taste Master had a penchant for these finer things, berries, nuts, spices...How did this Godly Glutton get his hands on Michelin-worthy dishes when trade was so abysmal across the country? Thanks to science, we know it was three main factors:
Anyway, this dude had the fanciest poo in all of northern Denmark because of location, immigration and status, and science can prove it by cross-referencing his hipster tasting journal with historical documents and corroborating all of that with particulate of the actual food found in the Bishop’s sin bin. Because the great thing about having these RIGHTEOUS COLON BOULDERS is that it is like an isolated time capsule that perfectly summed up specifically unique moments in time--which helped scientists prove beyond any doubt several facts about that time, about that city and about that person.
The emphasis here is unique. You’d have to be able to triangulate several independent sources that all verify the same PRECISE facts in a way that is indisputable--It would be like everyone here simultaneously posting “I’m at the Historic Green Mill, looking at Christopher Piatt (show host) RIGHT NOW.” and then we all post “CHRISTOPHER PIATT JUST DUCKED INTO THE BATHROOM AND WAS IN THERE FOR LIKE 10 MINUTES!!” Then Christopher posts, “I just took the most Historic shit, at the Historic Green Mill” but then instead of flushing it we SAVED it and BURIED it for future scientists to find. THAT’S HOW CLEAR CUT IT WOULD HAVE TO BE, TO MAKE THIS KIND OF HISTORY, RIGHT? GREAT, OK! EVERYBODY GET OUT YOUR PHONES
CHRISTOPHER! [I pull out a huge ziploc bag]: MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM!!
you have officially been warned.*
In 1937, historians were excavating a manor house in the city of Aalborg, in northern Denmark, when they discovered a box. Not just any box: a BOX BELONGING TO A BISHOP from 300 years ago. And not just any box belonging to a Bishop from 300 years ago, a box that contained his daily personal...brown tithings, shall we say...his prayerful pellets...his heavenly hershey squirts --I’m talking about his shit.
The Danish manor being excavated belonged to Bishop Yens Bircherod (who lived from 1658-1708), so the whole site and everything in it is centuries old. Including this box, and inside this box, perfectly preserved lumps of the Bishop's holy hot snakes. And for soooome reason, everything else that was discovered at the site during that 1937 dig was catalogued and studied, and that lonely lil’ shit box just sat in cold storage, untouched by human hands--or cheeks--until late November 2016.
BUT(T)! Once scientists got elbow deep in there, and cracked off several shards of semi-fossilized feces, they found to their delight, that it contained piles of valuable data. Valuable because normally any latrine in a given household from that time period has multiple users, but this one was the Bishop's private dropbox, kn'amean? So all the biological info was coming from the same leather cheerio.
It's as close to a "controlled environment" as you can get for 300 year old shit, which makes it historically & ethnographically significant. Each little dookie was a gift from the past, a perfectly packed parcel deposited by the most blessed loaf pincher in the manor, thanks be to God.
And from these humble bundles, sprang knowledge heretofore unknown about our friend, Bishop Yens Bircherod and the city he resided in. For One: He was a bomb-ass foodie!
The usual staples of the Danish diet back then were cabbage, pork and rye bread. Not so for our holy homeboy. There were traces of buckwheat, a local specialty, sure, but also spices, berries, nuts and fruits that his neighbors didn’t have access to. Scientists not only identified super rare and fancy foods in his clergy clumps they found matching entries in his diaries where he talks about the dope food he ate, so we know:
- what he ate,
-when he ate it,
-and within a 24 hour window of that, we know when his mortal prison was done with the meal, and pushed out some miracle marbles!
WHO'S GOT TWO FINGERS AND KEEPS A FOOD DIARY IN THE 1600’s?? Ah-this son of Christ. *makes cross sign with two fingers*
But hold up, how’d he get that fancy food? Our boy Yens was born smack in the middle of Denmark’s second war in a row with Sweden, which was a total disaster for his country. Luckily for them Sweden’s king dropped dead in the middle of planning an invasion and everyone made peace in the Treaty of Copenhagen. Awesome.
But the war had ravaged Denmark. Nobles had to give up some of their power and yield exemptions from taxes and fees to help build the nation back up again. They were not in very good shape.
Unlike the Dutch East India company, which was rich as fuck and ushering the Netherlands into the a "Golden Age",
The Danish East India Company was a nightmare. Ships packed with silver sunk, and war decimated all the valuable trade holdings the company had except for one satellite port city. Trade was an absolute shitshow!
But Yens, our Sacred Taste Master had a penchant for these finer things, berries, nuts, spices...How did this Godly Glutton get his hands on Michelin-worthy dishes when trade was so abysmal across the country? Thanks to science, we know it was three main factors:
- Aalborg’s location. The city sits right on the Limfjord, the waters of which feed directly from:
- Aalborg Bay of the Kattegat to the East and
- Out to the North Sea on the West, so any trading ships coming in from either side, regardless of how few, automatically stop in at this city’s naturally well-situated harbor to do business,--
- Secondly, scientists dug deep and cross-referenced the local history: Jette Linaa, an expert from the Moesgard Museum, who is studying the *SACRED STOOL SAMPLES--THANKS BE TO GOD* remarked that high profile products were apparently traded by some very specialized merchants in the city, and Aalborg was special because there was a class of very prosperous merchants who were all migrants from southern countries, namely Germany or the Netherlands, and where those countries didn’t have such great trade with Denmark, those individual merchants did, because of their connections back home. So Aalborg would have been screwed without them. “IMMIGRANTS, [THEY] GET THE JOB DONE.” Those merchants brought their connections with them, and those connections were in countries that had BETTER trade than Denmark, so this all led to Aalbourg getting the inside scoop.
- And finally Yens was a Bishop. Bishop means status. Sure Denmark waged an internal war on Catholicism and wiped the fuck out of the Franciscans for corruption, so everybody’s Lutheran now and TOOOOOTALLY corruption-free y'all, but if being Bishop means you get a free table at ALINEA, its hard to say no!
Anyway, this dude had the fanciest poo in all of northern Denmark because of location, immigration and status, and science can prove it by cross-referencing his hipster tasting journal with historical documents and corroborating all of that with particulate of the actual food found in the Bishop’s sin bin. Because the great thing about having these RIGHTEOUS COLON BOULDERS is that it is like an isolated time capsule that perfectly summed up specifically unique moments in time--which helped scientists prove beyond any doubt several facts about that time, about that city and about that person.
The emphasis here is unique. You’d have to be able to triangulate several independent sources that all verify the same PRECISE facts in a way that is indisputable--It would be like everyone here simultaneously posting “I’m at the Historic Green Mill, looking at Christopher Piatt (show host) RIGHT NOW.” and then we all post “CHRISTOPHER PIATT JUST DUCKED INTO THE BATHROOM AND WAS IN THERE FOR LIKE 10 MINUTES!!” Then Christopher posts, “I just took the most Historic shit, at the Historic Green Mill” but then instead of flushing it we SAVED it and BURIED it for future scientists to find. THAT’S HOW CLEAR CUT IT WOULD HAVE TO BE, TO MAKE THIS KIND OF HISTORY, RIGHT? GREAT, OK! EVERYBODY GET OUT YOUR PHONES
CHRISTOPHER! [I pull out a huge ziploc bag]: MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM!!
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