The cuisine of Iceland has a long history. Important parts of Icelandic cuisine are lamb, dairy, and fish, the latter because Iceland has traditionally been inhabited only near its coastline. Common foods in Iceland include skyr, hangikjöt (smoked lamb), kleinur, laufabrauð, and bollur. Þorramatur is a traditional buffet served at midwinter festivals called Þorrablót; it includes a selection of traditionally cured meat and fish products served with rúgbrauð (dense dark and sweet rye bread) and brennivín (an Icelandic akvavit). The flavors of this traditional country food originate in its preservation methods: pickling in fermented whey or brine, drying, and smoking.
Modern Icelandic chefs usually emphasise the quality of available ingredients rather than age-old cooking traditions and methods. Numerous restaurants in Iceland specialise in seafood. At the annual Food and Fun chef's competition (held since 2004), competitors create innovative dishes with fresh ingredients produced in Iceland. Points of pride are the quality of the lamb meat, seafood, and, more recently, skyr. Other local ingredients include seabirds and waterfowl (including their eggs), salmon and trout, crowberry, blueberry, rhubarb, Iceland moss, wild mushrooms, wild thyme, lovage, angelica, and dried seaweed, as well as a wide array of dairy products.
Because of the history of settlement in a harsh climate, animal products dominate Icelandic cuisine. Popular taste has been developing, however, to become closer to the European norm. As an example, consumption of vegetables has greatly increased in recent decades while consumption of fish has diminished, yet is still far higher than any other developed country at about quadruple the average.Tillaga til þingsályktunar um aðgerðir til að bæta heilbrigði Íslendinga með hollara mataræði og aukinni hreyfingu. [Whitepaper on "ways of improving the health of Icelanders through better nourishment and exercise"], Acts of the 131st Legislature of Iceland, 2004-05, case 806 ()
History The roots of Icelandic cuisine are to be found in the traditions of Scandinavian cuisine, as Icelandic culture, from its settlement in the 9th century onwards, is a distinctly Nordic culture with a traditional economy based on subsistence farming. Several events in the history of Iceland were of special significance for its cuisine. With Christianisation in 1000 came the tradition of fasting and a ban on horse meat consumption. More significantly in terms of farming and food supply was the onset of the Little Ice Age in the 14th century. Farmers were not able to grow barley anymore and had to rely on imports for any kind of cereal grains. The cooling of the climate also led to important changes in housing and heating: the longhouse of the early settlers, with its spacious hall, was replaced by the Icelandic turf houses with many smaller rooms, including a proper kitchen. This type of dwelling was used well into the 20th century.
Historians often use the Reformation beginning in 1517 as the transition between the Middle Ages and the early modern period in Icelandic history. Farming in Iceland continued with traditional practices from the 14th century to the late 18th century, when reforms were made due to the influence of the Enlightenment. A trade monopoly instituted by the Danish king in 1602 had a certain effect on culinary traditions. But the cuisine of Denmark had the most influence in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, when the country had close relations with Iceland. In the early 20th century, an economic boom based on commercial fishing and processing resulted in a slow transition from traditional dairy and meat-based foods to consumption of fish and root vegetables. Preserved foods began to be replaced with greater emphasis on fresh ingredients.
Medieval Iceland
When Iceland was settled by immigrants from Scandinavia and Viking colonies in the British Isles, they brought their farming methods and food traditions of the Norse world. Research indicates that the climate of Iceland was much milder during the Middle Ages than it is now, and sources tell of cultivation of barley and oats. Most of this would have been consumed as porridge or gruel or used for making beer. Cattle was the dominant farm animal, but farms also raised poultry, pigs, goats, horses and sheep. The poultry, horse, sheep and goat stocks first brought to Iceland have since developed in isolation, unaffected by modern selective breeding. Therefore, they are sometimes called the "settlement breed" or "viking breed".
Preservation methods
Fish was stored in salt, and before the Black Death, Iceland exported stockfish to the fish market in Bergen. However, salt seems to have been less abundant in Iceland than in Norway. Saltmaking, which was mostly done by boiling sea water or burning seaweed, gradually disappeared when overgrazing caused a shortage of firewood in most parts of the country in the 14th century. Instead of curing with salt, the people of Iceland began to preserve meat in fermented whey. This method was also known from Norway but acquired little significance there.
Archeological digs in medieval farms have revealed large round holes in storage rooms where the barrel containing the lactic acid was kept. Two medieval stories tell of men who saved their lives in a burning house by staying submerged inside the acid barrel. Medieval Icelanders used fermentation for preserving both fish and meat, a method that greatly alters the taste of the food, making it similar to very strong cheese. Fermentation is still used to cure shark (see hákarl), skate and herring. Fermented eggs are a regional delicacy, rarely found nowadays. Smoking and drying meat and fish was also practiced, although the drying of meat was seen as something of a last resort.
Cheese Cheese was made from goat and sheep milk as well as cow milk. Skyr, a soft yogurt-like cheese eaten with spoons, was originally a tradition brought to Iceland from Norway. It has survived only in Iceland. The whey left over when making skyr was made to go sour and used for storing meat. It is likely that the predominance of skyr in Icelandic cuisine caused the disappearance of other cheesemaking traditions in the modern era, until industrial cheesemaking started in the first half of the 20th century. Cheesemaking was part of seter-farming (seljabúskapur), living in mountain huts in the highlands in late spring. Here farmers could separate the kids and lambs from their mothers in order to milk the adults. They often made cheese while still in the highlands. Flavors would reflect the new grasses.
Cooking and meals
The longhouses of the first settlers usually included a long fire in the center to warm the house. Around it, holes were dug in the floor to be used as earth ovens for baking bread and cooking meat. Women would place dough or meat in the hole along with hot embers from the fire, and cover it tightly for the time needed. They boiled liquids in wooden staved churns by putting hot stones from the fire directly into the liquid (a practice that continued to the modern age). Low stone hearths surrounded the fire, but mostly the cooking was done on the floor.
In the 14th century, Icelandic turf houses were developed and gradually replaced the longhouses. They had a kitchen with a raised stone hearth for cooking called hlóðir. The cooling of the climate during the Little Ice Age made it impossible to grow barley, and sheep replaced the more expensive cattle as predominant livestock. Iceland became dependent on imports for all cereals. Due to a shortage of firewood, the people turned to peat, dung, and dried heather for fuels.
In medieval Iceland the people ate two meals during the day, the lunch or dagverður at noon, and supper or náttverður at the end of the day. Food was eaten from bowls. Wooden staved tankards with a hinged lid were used for drinking. Later these were developed into bulging casks, called askar, used for serving food. The upper class used elaborately carved drinking horns on special occasions. Spoons were the most common eating utensil, made of horn or bone, and often decorated with carvings. Except for feasts, for which tables would be laid, people ate their food from their laps, while sitting on their beds, which lined the outer wall of the house. In addition to processing crops and meats and cooking, the farmer's wife apportioned the food among the family and friends. In richer households this role was entrusted to a special butler called a bryti.
Early modern period Icelandic subsistence farming from the Middle Ages well into the 20th century was restricted by the short production period (summer) compared to the long cold period. Apart from occasional game, the food produced in the three months of summer (including preserving meats and cheeses) had to suffice for nine months of winter. Researchers have estimated that, based on these methods of subsistence, Iceland could support a population of around 60,000. For centuries, farming methods changed very little, and fishing was done by men using hooks and lines from rowboats constructed from driftwood. Farmers also owned the boats, so fishing was limited to periods when the farmhands were not needed for farm work. Fish was not just a food, but a trade good, and it was exchanged for products brought by foreign merchant ships. The people were dependent on trade for cereals, such as rye and oats, transported to Iceland by Danish merchants. Until the 19th century, the vast majority of Icelandic farmers were tenant farmers on land owned by the Icelandic landowner elite, the Catholic church, or (especially after the confiscation of church lands during the Reformation) the king of Denmark. Tenant farmers used surplus fish, tallow, and butter to pay the landowner his dues.
Considerable regional variation in subsistence farming developed according to whether people lived close to the ocean or inland. Also, in the north of the country, the main fishing period coincided with the haymaking period in the autumn. This resulted in underdevelopment of fishing because labor was devoted to haymaking. In the South, by contrast, the main fishing period was from February to July. Some historians have described Icelandic society as a highly conservative farming society. Because of the demand for farmhands in the short summers, tenant farmers and landowners opposed the formation of fishing villages. Fishing was considered risky compared to farming, and the Alþingi passed many resolutions restricting or forbidding landless tenants from living in coastal villages to pursue fishing.
Foreign trade
Given the dominance of subsistence farming in Iceland, there was a lack of specialisation and commerce among farms. As testified in some of the Icelandic sagas, domestic trade seems to have been suspect as a type of usury from the age of settlement. Trade with foreign merchant ships was lively, however, and vital for the economy, especially for cereals and honey, alcohol, and (later) tobacco. Fishing ships from the coastal areas of Europe stopped for provisions in Icelandic harbors and traded what they had with the local people. This would include stale beer, salted pork, biscuits, and chewing tobacco, sold for knitted wool mittens, blankets, etc. Merchant ships put in occasionally from Holland, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Spain, to sell their products, mainly for stockfish. A ship is prominently displayed in the royal seal of Iceland.