My Opinion: Jón Gnarr - Blood-puddingism

I am very interested in the so-called “Icelandic national culture”. It is sometimes suggested that this or that is interwoven with or is a part of the national culture. This is often said about our religion. And it is true. Christianity has had an enormous effect on the history and culture of the Icelandic people. But based on the statements of politicians, you might think that the Icelandic culture was mostly rooted in our diet and various dishes, mostly processed meat. The Icelandic national culture is also linked with chauvinism and the importance to protect ourselves from foreign influences. Some think the greatest threat comes from America and sneer at anything they think derives from there. Others seem to fear Europe, especially the European Union, which seems to want nothing more than to annex the country and make us a homogeneous European state.

Many politicians don’t know how to google and even admit it freely. I, on the other hand, am pretty good at it, and it is the quickest and best way to get information. So I decided to do a little research and look for information about a few Icelandic dishes. I started by googling singed sheep heads and found that the ancient Greeks ate this dish long before the settlement of Iceland. They also eat singed sheep heads in Norway, where they are called smalehovud. In Turkey they’re called besbarmaq and are in many places a national dish. Nothing Icelandic about that. The singed sheep head comes to us from the countries of the Middle East, through Norway. I also looked at the blood pudding. It’s the same story. It’s a well-known dish in many Middle Eastern countries. The most famous of these dishes is probably the Scottish haggis. It is similar to our blood pudding, served with potatoes and mashed swede. And since many of our ancestors came from Northern England, it is not unlikely that they brought with them the art of making blood pudding. At least we did not invent it. Sheep have always been our main source of food. But we are far from being the only people in the world who eat sheep. We aren’t even the only ones who eat the testicles of the ram. They also do that in Europe. Every year there are ram-testicle festivals in Europe and the United States. I could, however, not find anything on Google about anyone but us eating meat pickled in sour whey. So the Icelandic soured meat seems to live up to its reputation of being Icelandic. The problem with the soured meat, however, is that it is rarely available, usually only in midwinter.

Hongeohoe

Few fish courses are Icelandic. The cooking of fish is rather simple; it’s usually either cooked in a pot or fried on a pan. There is nothing special about that. And Icelanders started eating fish rather late. There were few boats here and even fewer docks. Salt fish seems to come originally from the countries around the Mediterranean, like so much else. Salting and drying fish is a preservation method known all around the world. Not even the dried harðfiskur is Icelandic. This is an ancient Chinese dish. And they don’t just salt it, they also use spices. This did not surprise me. But I was amazed when I googled the fermented ray. I thought that must be an Icelandic specialty. No, in Korea, it is considered a delicacy and is called hongeohoe. The processing method probably came here through Greenland. If people eat stinky ray in Korea it can hardly be considered a specifically Icelandic phenomenon. Korea was inhabited thousands of years before Iceland.

Fattigman

You cannot finish such research into the origins of Icelandic dishes without looking at the pastry. According to Google, the kleina (cruller) is German. The word is derived from the German word “klein” which means small. In Norway it is called fattigman and in Sweden klenater. In Denmark it is klejne. These foreign crullers are shaped exactly like the Icelandic ones. The only difference between the European and the Icelandic cruller is that the European one is usually coated with sugar, whereas the Icelandic one is not. I would like, in this context, to mention the "cocktail sauce", which many people seem to think was invented here in Iceland, that there were Icelandic Vikings who first got the brilliant idea to mix mayonnaise and tomato ketchup. That is a misconception. The cocktail sauce is an ancient European sauce. Julius Caesar probably ate a lot of cocktail sauce. Tomatoes grow wild around the Mediterranean, but not in Iceland. The tomato ketchup was first brought to Iceland during the Second World War. British soldiers made the first cocktail sauce in Iceland to go with their fish and chips.

Examination reveals that Icelandic food culture is rather foreign. Most of the things we call Icelandic seem to have been brought to the country from elsewhere. The only dish that is completely Icelandic seems to be skyr. Most of the good things that have come to Iceland seem to have come from abroad, mainly Europe. And that is fine. Therefore we should not be afraid of foreign influence, but welcome it instead. We can be trusted to choose what is good for us and throw away the rest.