Eat, Drink and be Merry

Now in Iceland it is the month of Porri - a traditional Norse/Viking month that starts the Friday after the 19th Jan. The month begins with Bondadagur (husbands day) and ends with Konudagur (wife’s day.) During the month Porrablots are held, traditional feasts with singing,toasts and general merriment ( sounds a lot like Burn’s night ) 

Traditional foods are eaten such as svid or sheep’s head - singed,de-brained and boiled with ears,eyes and tongue. hakarl - putrefied shark, which everyone talks about here and some of the other Artists have eaten, as you might imagine it has mixed reviews. Supposedly if it were not fermented it would be highly toxic, once fermented it is regarded as extremely beneficial to health. The taste is so strong that it is traditionally washed down with brennivin a traditional strong alcohol also known as black death, which is made with potato and caraway.

Apologies vegetarians - but this is Iceland

One story says that in the old days farmer’s celebrated the return of daylight by jumping half-naked on one foot around the farmhouse to welcome the month of porri and were then rewarded with a feast. I read somewhere else that farmers took off their trousers and sat on the ground to see if the ground were warm enough to farm !! It cannot have been this early on in the year - no body need take any piece of clothing off to see that the ground is pretty cold right now.

Quite a lot of snow today - keep your trousers on. 

Both Lamb and fish are in plentiful supply here.

 Liz was in the supermarket today, she often goes before it closes at 6 when it is busy, she likes to find out what people are having for tea, tonight the majority were having lamb with potato or sweet potato and veg, one couple said they were having horse and they showed her big fat sausages that looked like huge saveloy’s filled with horse !

Here are some Icelandic goodies I have purchased.

Skyr is an interesting thing,it’s a cheese tastes a bit like yogurt but creamier full of protein and fat free, it’s pretty yummy - today i bought coconut flavour. It’s a very traditional food, at one time
it began to be unpopular and outdated, an angry man went to the parliament and threw it at the politicians which received a lot of interest and now it is extremely popular once again. 

But today was an excellent day on the food and drink front as Kaffi Klara was open !! Yo - because of our festival, There were cakes and coffee and old -fashioned telephones as it used to be the post office and telephone exchange i suppose.

Liz was in her element.

There is so much to say about food and drink, that i’ll need to say more another time.

Some Artists enjoying cake !