I just made "viking" bread with my son as part of his homework, and I have no illusion that the recipe I found is authentic either, but the first recipe I found had potato flour in it...
"Authentic" viking bread would have been made with hand-milled oat and rye, with some wheat; to date you can see much more oat and rye harvest in most parts of Scandinavia; but just as you point out, potatoes are today also seen as an essential part of an "authentic" Norwegian diet and is a part of most dishes considered traditionally Norwegian.
Even more amusing to me is that while porridge is authentic in that respect, the most common modern types are not: rice porridge is certainly quite modern, yet it's pretty much considered as authentically Norwegian as you can get to have rice porridge served with butter, sugar and cinnamon, with both sugar and cinnamon being "modern" introductions.
And it was first a few years ago I learned that most of the Christmas cookie traditions we have are less than a century old, with ironic ones like "fattigmann" (literally "poor man") being introduced in the 1930's in a cook book where the recipe including more eggs than the average 1930's family consumed in a year, and so not actually spreading until much later.
Christmas traditions in particular, now that I have a kid of my own, has driven how that "authentic" and "tradition" usually really for the most part stays consistent only a generation or two. What my son is growing up with certainly has some parts in common with the Christmas celebrations of my childhood, but it has already morphed drastically, both in terms of traditions and even the food we insist is very authentic.
"Authentic" viking bread would have been made with hand-milled oat and rye, with some wheat; to date you can see much more oat and rye harvest in most parts of Scandinavia; but just as you point out, potatoes are today also seen as an essential part of an "authentic" Norwegian diet and is a part of most dishes considered traditionally Norwegian.
Even more amusing to me is that while porridge is authentic in that respect, the most common modern types are not: rice porridge is certainly quite modern, yet it's pretty much considered as authentically Norwegian as you can get to have rice porridge served with butter, sugar and cinnamon, with both sugar and cinnamon being "modern" introductions.
And it was first a few years ago I learned that most of the Christmas cookie traditions we have are less than a century old, with ironic ones like "fattigmann" (literally "poor man") being introduced in the 1930's in a cook book where the recipe including more eggs than the average 1930's family consumed in a year, and so not actually spreading until much later.
Christmas traditions in particular, now that I have a kid of my own, has driven how that "authentic" and "tradition" usually really for the most part stays consistent only a generation or two. What my son is growing up with certainly has some parts in common with the Christmas celebrations of my childhood, but it has already morphed drastically, both in terms of traditions and even the food we insist is very authentic.