Dining with Icelanders in Reykjavik, Iceland

No matter if it’s geyseros, glaciers or guillemots, Iceland is a state bursting with natural miracles and one particular that you truly must try out to go to at the very least the moment. Hopefully my posts from our new journey have shown just how considerably there is to see and do – the landscapes and waterfalls, the geothermal miracles and the prosperity of special encounters. But most likely you recognized one particular issue missing? While we have achieved plenty of men and women on the way, a great deal of what we did was very significantly geared toward vacationers and, apart from the occasional guidebook, most of our interactions had been also with other visitors.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could expertise the actual Iceland for a working day, or even just a handful of hrs? A much more reliable encounter where by you get to meet up with regional Icelandic people and learn a little about their lifestyle and working day-to-day lives, potentially more than a classic Icelandic meal. This is exactly where Dining with Icelanders comes in.

Eating with Icelanders is the brainchild of Helga Kristin Fridjonsdottir, herself an Icelander, and owner of journey advisory Iceland Unwrapped. Iceland Unwrapped is all about connecting people today with Helga’s homeland in a additional immersive way, bringing the interactions among individuals far more to the fore than could be attainable with a common tour working experience, for case in point.

Eating with Icelanders is a wholly distinctive way to get to know Iceland and Icelanders. Helga is an skilled traveller herself – obtaining lived in Brazil, Austria, Denmark, Portugal and the Netherlands, as well as Iceland of class – and connects people to Iceland with community folks, over a eating experience, for a truly special knowledge.  In our situation, we ended up fortunate enough that Helga invited our family to join her individual relatives for evening meal at her dwelling on one particular of our past evenings in Iceland, although this wouldn’t usually be the circumstance since Helga has a amount of distinct hosts with which she connects her vacation clientele at a wide range of unique venues.

We have been incredibly warmly welcomed into Helga’s household. She is fluent in Icelandic, English, Danish and Portuguese, and returned from the Netherlands (from where by she had now began her organization some yrs previously) in 2020 to dwell in Reykjavik with her husband, Mike, a communications marketing consultant from Chicago, and teenage son, Gabriel.

We were incredibly a great deal created to sense at home and inspired to support ourselves to some appetisers that provided delightful smoked lamb and smoked salmon on buttered rúgbrauð. This rye bread would ordinarily be created in the ground, with the dough typically set into a container this sort of as a milk carton and left in the geothermally heated earth for 24 several hours, and then it’s completely ready.

I was also intrigued to consider the harðfiskur – dried fish (in this situation, haddock) with salted butter as I had browse about this getting a well-known Icelandic snack. It’s Iceland’s response to fish jerky and has been preferred in the state for centuries… and is of training course also packed with protein, vitamins and Omega 3 so really a nutritious snack, way too. After you’ve tasted it, you will see why it is a staple in Iceland!

It was attractive to get to know Helga and her household, and we had an fulfilling chat about a total range of topics, from mastering about how Icelanders stay and the Icelandic instruction procedure, to the country’s ground breaking strength initiatives and residing with earthquakes. We even chatted about elves and road diversions, the Katla sequence on Netflix, and Gabby and Mike’s enjoy of Tottenham Hotspur.

For our principal, we had cod that was only cooked in butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper. This is a terrific illustration of how not seeking to more than-complicate a dish pays large dividends as the cod was so delicious that it didn’t have to have nearly anything additional.

It was served with potatoes and greens, as the conversation moved on to Icelandic delicacies, our Arctic rafting expertise, the pandemic, politics, revolutionary companies in Iceland and much more. I was actually interested to hear how the recent boom in journey to Iceland was seeing the tourism market overtake the fishing marketplace, and however Iceland could survive from fishing by itself given that this was established all through the COVID pandemic.

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For dessert, we had pönnukökur served with jam – splendidly delicate Icelandic pancakes that are a lot like crêpes. They had been served with rhubarb jam and whipped product and we had been revealed how they have been ordinarily crammed, folded in 50 percent and then folded yet again into quarters.

I later identified that these golden pancakes, which resemble the solar, are usually built to welcome the 1st sunshine in late January in a celebration called “Sólarkaffi” when the solar rises high adequate over the mountains to shine its rays more than the locals.

Right before we realized it, a few hrs experienced flown by. We’d had a definitely pleasing evening and experienced been designed to sense extremely welcome we’d savored an expertise that very couple of vacationers browsing Iceland would at any time get to experience. If this sounds like some thing you’d take pleasure in, be guaranteed to make contact with Helga. She is extremely approachable (in fact, I spoke to her on line prior to our very own check out to Iceland and picked up all sorts of practical recommendations), and will be only way too delighted to aid you, regardless of whether it is with scheduling a Eating with Icelanders encounter or building a thing which is exclusive and bespoke, custom made personalized just for you.

Scheduling a journey to Iceland your self? You can observe a video from our trip to Iceland in this article:

Disclosure: This publish is sponsored by Iceland Unwrapped. Our journey to Iceland was also sponsored by Helly Hansen.