In Denmark there are no lentils, they just have a plain thin soup recipe to get them through the hard Winter months. History is vague on this but my theory is that marauding Vikings had them done away with as a direct result on an intellectual crisis that occurred over the portrayal of Loki, God of Mischief and Mayhem (later to be translated and cruelly reinterpreted as a child's sweet, yes, I can reveal that that is what M&M actually stands for). Loki was always the subject of camp fire arguments and mass murders and due to his wiry profile and scary demeanour associated with thin and (unmanly) soup. It was believed that to thicken the soup would be a gross insult to Loki and so incur the God of M&M's great wrath or he might just play some cruel tricks and twists of fate on you. These might include sinking your longship on some uncharted reef or rendering you unable to rape or pillage properly due a mystery illness, impediment or complex psychological disorder.
None of this went down well with the chronically superstitious and baffledVikings great sailors thought they undeniably were (discovering America before the Americans and Greenland before the colour ever existed or could be knitted into a nice pullover). As a result the Vikings avoided using lentils and went so far as to deny their very existence, this was reflected in them being removed in a cruel and ritualistic manner from songs, sonnets, great and epic tales and most soup recipes. The end had arrived for the lentils of the west lands, the rest as they say is some kind of history.
Editor's note: Loki is/was of course a Norse God and maybe didn't have much of a following in Denmark...or did he?
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