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 a minimum of as soon as. Hopefully my posts from our current journey have demonstrated simply how a lot there may be 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 got met numerous individuals on the best way, a lot of what we did was very a lot geared in direction of vacationers and, apart from the occasional information, most of our interactions have been additionally with different vacationers.
Wouldn’t or not it’s good for those who may expertise the true Iceland for a day, and even only a few hours? A extra genuine expertise the place you get to satisfy native Icelandic individuals and study just a little 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 may be attainable with a conventional tour expertise, for instance.
Eating with Icelanders is a very completely different technique 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 one in every of our final evenings in Iceland, though this wouldn’t all the time be the case since Helga has a variety of completely different hosts with which she connects her journey purchasers at quite a lot of completely different venues.
We have been very warmly welcomed into Helga’s house. 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 advisor from Chicago, and teenage son, Gabriel.
We have been very a lot made to really feel at house 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 equivalent to 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 attempt 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 common 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 beautiful to get to know Helga and her household, and we had an pleasant chat about an entire vary of matters, from studying about how Icelanders reside and the Icelandic schooling system, to the nation’s progressive power tasks 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 primary, we had cod that was merely cooked in butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper. It is a nice instance of how not making an attempt to over-complicate a dish pays large 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, progressive firms in Iceland and extra. I used to be actually to listen to how the current growth in journey to Iceland was seeing the tourism trade overtake the fishing trade, and but Iceland may survive from fishing alone since this was confirmed through the COVID pandemic.
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For dessert, we had pönnukökur served with jam – splendidly delicate Icelandic pancakes which are very similar to 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 pleasant 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 feels like one thing you’d take pleasure in, remember to contact Helga. She may 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 can be solely too completely satisfied that can assist 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 possibly can watch a video from our journey to Iceland right here:
Disclosure: This submit is sponsored by Iceland Unwrapped. Our journey to Iceland was additionally sponsored by Helly Hansen.
