All Things, Iceland-Style

Ái á Á á á á á – Great-grandpa from Á has a sheep in the river (Not kidding, it’s a legitimate Icelandic sentence! Spoken, it sounds like: Owie ow ow ow ow ow ow. Think about that next time you hit your thumb with a hammer.)


Lent has begun, in Iceland as much as anywhere else, and I have to say the first three days this week were most interesting. The Icelanders let other nations have their Mardi Gras and their Pancake Tuesdays—here, they do things their way.

The Monday before Ash Wednesday is called Bolludagur—Cream-Puff Day. (It’s even on the calendars the banks give out!) I assume this is very close to Pancake Day in other parts of the world, traditionally used to finish off the eggs and cream people weren’t allowed to eat during Lent. But Icelanders can have pancakes any day (now)—it’s not every day you have an excuse to eat a sweet pastry with a heap of whipped cream and berries on the inside and chocolate on the outside! They sell them everywhere, just this one day. Well, and the day after—you can’t waste leftovers. This, by the way, is a decided improvement over the other traditional Icelandic foods I’ve blogged about.

The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is called Sprengidagur—Bursting Day. Apparently the tradition is to stuff yourself to bursting with meat and (for whatever reason) peas. I can’t figure the pea thing, but as the university cafeteria took a break from their usual mushroom or cauliflower soup for their version of split pea and ham, I’m not complaining.

Ash Wednesday itself is called Öskudagur—Ash Day, creatively enough. Only instead of a day of fasting, somehow it has morphed into an Icelandic Halloween, with kids dressing in costumes, trick-or-treating door-to-door, and generally getting into sugar-induced antics. I was most confused as I walked around town, but fortunately Google educated me.

A few more tidbits about life in Iceland, for the curious:

First, you can’t get Ziplock bags here. This may actually be a Europe-wide phenomenon, since after I complained to my French roommate about this sore gap in packaging provision, she asked me in a very confused voice what we use them for. Um…everything? I guess they don’t show that commercial here where the lady puts soup in a bag and turns it upside down to show how watertight it is.

Second, Iclanders love gas-guzzling monster cars—which is slightly ironic given that their city buses run on clean fuel whose only exhaust is water. The snow tires (which, naturally, I haven’t managed to take a picture of) make a certain amount of sense for driving outside of the city, but the sheer number of SUVs, pickups, and well-equipped jeeps makes me feel sometimes like I’m back in Nebraska.

Third, one of our professors here told us that the entire police force (Lögreglan) is unarmed—the Icelanders don’t have the right to bear arms, which doesn’t seem to bother them in the least—except for one patrol car that apparently has a single gun in it. This gun is not to protect against criminals, however: its sole purpose is to shoot livestock who have been hit by cars on the highway. Such is Iceland.

Now, wasn’t that just worth the read?