Whether or not it’s geyseros, glaciers or guillemots, Iceland is a rustic bursting with pure wonders and one that you just actually should attempt to go to at the least as soon as. Hopefully my posts from our current journey have demonstrated simply how a lot there’s to see and do – the landscapes and waterfalls, the geothermal wonders and the wealth of distinctive experiences. However maybe you observed one factor lacking? While we’ve met a number of individuals on the way in which, a lot of what we did was very a lot geared in direction of vacationers and, other than the occasional information, most of our interactions have been additionally with different vacationers.
Wouldn’t it’s good in case you may expertise the actual Iceland for a day, and even just some hours? A extra genuine expertise the place you get to fulfill native Icelandic individuals and study a little bit about their tradition and day-to-day lives, maybe over a conventional Icelandic meal. That is the place Eating with Icelanders is available in.
Eating with Icelanders is the brainchild of Helga Kristin Fridjonsdottir, herself an Icelander, and proprietor of journey advisory Iceland Unwrapped. Iceland Unwrapped is all about connecting individuals with Helga’s homeland in a extra immersive approach, bringing the interactions between individuals extra to the fore than could be doable with a conventional tour expertise, for instance.
Eating with Icelanders is a totally completely different strategy to get to know Iceland and Icelanders. Helga is an skilled traveller herself – having lived in Brazil, Austria, Denmark, Portugal and the Netherlands, in addition to Iceland in fact – and connects guests to Iceland with native individuals, over a eating encounter, for a really distinctive expertise. In our case, we have been fortunate sufficient that Helga invited our household to affix her family for dinner at her home on certainly one of our final evenings in Iceland, though this wouldn’t all the time be the case since Helga has quite a lot of completely different hosts with which she connects her journey shoppers at a wide range of completely different venues.
We have been very warmly welcomed into Helga’s dwelling. She is fluent in Icelandic, English, Danish and Portuguese, and returned from the Netherlands (from the place she had already began her firm some years earlier) in 2020 to reside in Reykjavik together with her husband, Mike, a communications guide from Chicago, and teenage son, Gabriel.
We have been very a lot made to really feel at dwelling and inspired to assist ourselves to some appetisers that included scrumptious smoked lamb and smoked salmon on buttered rúgbrauð. This rye bread would historically be made within the floor, with the dough usually put right into a container resembling a milk carton and left within the geothermally heated earth for twenty-four hours, after which it’s prepared.
I used to be additionally to strive the harðfiskur – dried fish (on this case, haddock) with salted butter as I had examine this being a well-liked Icelandic snack. It’s Iceland’s reply to fish jerky and has been fashionable within the nation for hundreds of years… and is in fact additionally full of protein, nutritional vitamins and Omega 3 so fairly a wholesome snack, too. When you’ve tasted it, you’ll see why it’s a staple in Iceland!
It was pretty to get to know Helga and her household, and we had an satisfying chat about an entire vary of matters, from studying about how Icelanders reside and the Icelandic training system, to the nation’s modern power initiatives and dwelling with earthquakes. We even chatted about elves and highway diversions, the Katla collection on Netflix, and Gabby and Mike’s love of Tottenham Hotspur.
For our fundamental, we had cod that was merely cooked in butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper. This can be a nice instance of how not making an attempt to over-complicate a dish pays enormous dividends because the cod was so tasty that it didn’t want something extra.
It was served with potatoes and greens, because the dialog moved on to Icelandic delicacies, our Arctic rafting expertise, the pandemic, politics, modern corporations in Iceland and extra. I used to be actually to listen to how the current growth in journey to Iceland was seeing the tourism business overtake the fishing business, and but Iceland may survive from fishing alone since this was confirmed in the course of the COVID pandemic.
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For dessert, we had pönnukökur served with jam – splendidly delicate Icelandic pancakes which might be very like crêpes. They have been served with rhubarb jam and whipped cream and we have been proven how they have been historically stuffed, folded in half after which folded once more into quarters.
I later found that these golden pancakes, which resemble the solar, are sometimes made to welcome the primary sunshine in late January in a celebration known as “Sólarkaffi” when the solar rises excessive sufficient above the mountains to shine its rays over the locals.
Earlier than we knew it, three hours had flown by. We’d had a very satisfying night and had been made to really feel exceptionally welcome; we’d loved an expertise that only a few vacationers visiting Iceland would ever get to expertise. If this seems like one thing you’d get pleasure from, make sure to contact Helga. She could be very approachable (in truth, I spoke to her on-line previous to our personal go to to Iceland and picked up all kinds of helpful ideas), and will probably be solely too pleased that will help you, whether or not it’s with reserving a Eating with Icelanders expertise or creating one thing that’s distinctive and bespoke, customized tailor-made only for you.
Planning a visit to Iceland your self? You may watch a video from our journey to Iceland right here:
Disclosure: This put up is sponsored by Iceland Unwrapped. Our journey to Iceland was additionally sponsored by Helly Hansen.
