An award-winning Scottish butcher has claimed that haggis — Scotland's national dish — isn't Scottish after all, but rather Scandinavian.

Joe Callaghan, a master butcher at family-run Callaghans of Helensburgh Butchers in the UK claims that the dish was brought to Scotland by marauding Norsemen during the Viking conquest of the Scottish coastline in the early ninth century.

In fact, Callaghan feels so strongly about the dish's alleged Nordic origins that he has hailed the haggis an "imposter", and is campaigning for "staggis" — a version of haggis based on the Viking recipe — to replace Scotland’s national dish.

Haggis is not for the faint of heart. Traditional haggis is made from a sheep's stomach stuffed with sheep’s "pluck" — its heart, liver and lungs — mixed with onions, oatmeal and suet. However, according to Callaghan, haggis was originally made from deer hunted in the Scottish wilderness.

"We started researching haggis three years ago and we found that the word haggis comes from a Viking word meaning bag," Callaghan told Mashable. "During our research, we discovered that the Vikings made haggis from venison. So, we decided to make haggis using ingredients that the Vikings would have used when they first landed in Scotland, only we've called it 'staggis' in homage to the wild Highlands red deer, which are indigenous to Scotland."

"I've based my recipe on the original Viking recipe, but I've put my own spin on it. Only two people in our shop know the staggis recipe, so it's top secret."

Staggis has to be made using free-range, wild venison, and the meat must come from the stag, rather than the doe, Callaghan insists. Only approved staggis hunters — of which there are very few — are able to provide the meat for Callaghan's staggises.

"You definitely won't find this in Tesco," says Callaghan, who's keen to avoid mass production of the speciality dish.

Callaghan isn't the first person to suggest that haggis might have Scandinavian origins. British celebrity chef Clarissa Dickson Wright explored the dish's Viking origins in her 1996 book The Haggis; in 2009, the historian Catherine Brown caused something of a stir after claiming that haggis was first created by the English, a claim most Scots would not take too kindly.

Scotland's chequered political history has also played a part in shaping the way haggis is produced. Sheep farming is a relatively recent addition to Scotland; it was introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries, during the Highland Clearances. During this period, large numbers of Scottish tenant farmers were evicted and displaced by aristocratic landowners, causing a dramatic shift in Scottish agriculture from arable farming to sheep rearing.

"Sheep are actually something of a sore point in Scotland. That's why it strikes me as odd that our national dish should be made from an animal that was the driving force behind the Highland Clearances, and is viewed by some as a symbol of Scottish oppression," Callaghan continued.

"I believe that the stag is a more majestic symbol for Scotland. Stags represent the full flavour of Scotland because they're free to roam the hills and glens of Scotland. The whole philosophy of staggis is about freedom; something that is very much at the heart of the Scottish people."