(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

As I’ve mentioned a few times in my blog, Iceland has a very small population and the majority of it is in the capital city of Reykjavik. So what’s it really like?

Unfortunately, I don’t have much to show you.  This was the very first destination with my digital camera and I didn’t anticipate that I would ever be writing a blog about it.  However, upon reviewing my photos of Reykjavik I realized that almost all of them were dominated by a large umbrella, as it was raining for almost our entire visit.

We spent a lot of time indoors in Reykjavik.  I wasn’t going to include the photograph below, which was clearly not taken with my usual care, until I realized that there really wasn’t much blog-appropriate photography from Reykjavik. Most of the photos in today’s post are from elsewhere in Iceland.

Many travel guides spend considerable time describing some of the more unusual traditional Icelandic foods.  Iceland was once a poor country and it was necessary to eat whatever was available.  As you can see from the Svið (sheep’s head) in the above menu, some of those traditional items have managed to stay popular today.  I took a look at the Svið (which does not include the brain) but did not actually have any.

At one of the big markets in Reykjavik, we encountered the legendary hákarl:  putrefied meat from the Greenland shark.  It has to be buried underground and allowed to ferment for a couple of months because the meat in its “original” form is toxic to humans.  The poisons include uric acid…it seems that this particular shark urinates through its skin.  However, the fermentation process, followed by another extended period of air-drying, removes the toxins from the meat and it becomes edible.

I did not try hákarl either:  while it may not have been toxic, it apparently smells like very strong ammonia and rotten cheese…and can cause gagging for the uninitiated.  At the market, we could not smell it because it was kept tightly sealed.  Given the way it was presented at the market, it did seem to be aimed more at adventurous tourists than at everyday Icelanders.

Another traditional item I did try was Brennivín.  It is the equivalent of brandy, as the name translates into English as “burning wine.”  It is actually a powerful schnapps-like drink made from fermented potatoes and caraway seeds.  Many travel writers speak poorly of it (indeed, its nickname is “Black Death”) but I enjoyed it enough to bring some home from the airport’s duty free shoppe.

I also developed a taste for chocolate-covered licorice in Iceland: like most northern European countries, Iceland is crazy about licorice and there are many different ways to enjoy it.  I later had a variation on this theme in Finland (licorice-covered chocolate, which I liked even more) but it was in Iceland where I first discovered and enjoyed this unusual combination of sweet and salty.   If you like dark chocolate with sea salt, you will surely enjoy the combination of chocolate and licorice!