Reestit mutton

History in a word. The twists and turns in the journey of a word are fascinating. In the depth of the cold, raw and dark winter nothing can beat a bowl of steaming reestit mutton soup. The word reestit has made the full round of the North Sea. The Old Scots reist 'to smoke dry, cure' is attested since 1508. It might be a Scandinavian loan: Danish/Norwegian riste, Swedish rista all mean 'to cook over a grid', and Faeroese ræst 'air dry, hang cure, ferment' is very close to the Shaetlan and Orcadian reest 'cure, dry over heat'. The ultimate origin for them all is Middle Low German rôsten / Middle Dutch rôosten 'to roast', from Old Saxon *rōstian, which ultimately comes from Proto-Germanic *raustijan 'to roast'. The word evolved to also mean the item that meat was roasted or cured on, typically a grid or a framework of some kind. In Shetland that was a wooden framework where the mutton was hung to cure it by smoke-drying. The reestit mutton therefore seems to be a Hansa loan around the North Sea, where each community has adapted the meaning to the kind of process that suited the place best.