Þorrabloated

One of the famous Icelandic events is Þorrablot, a tradition from viking times, where people eat "old-time" food. However "old-time" food in Iceland, is, well... hmm...

Let's just say that it's a good thing this country has evolved :).

We got some of that food at work (in celebration of Bóndadagur aka farmers' day or men's day). We also got invited to Jó's aunt's, who introduced us to some more of that food.

Here are some of the foods:

• Svið: singed sheep's head, blow torched to burn the hair before being cooked. The food that looks you back in the eye.
• Sviðsulta: bits of meat from the svid, pressed together, in gelatin.
• Súrt slátur (lifrarpylsa and blóðmör): two types of soured sausage, one made out of liver and the other a blood sausage kind of thing.
• Hrútspungar: soured sheep testicles, pressed in a gelationous matter. Was available at work but not at the dinner, so no pics unfortunately.
• Hákarl: shark meat buried raw in the ground for several month, then hung to dry. Smells like stale urine because of all the ammonia in it. The smell sticks to your clothes for a long time too. Hence the closed box in the picture.
• Lundabaggar: roll of lamb meat, soured.
• Saltkjöt: salted lamb. Very salty, but quite nice.

And here are the pictures...

Clockwise, from the top left: lifrarpylsa, lundabaggar, sviðsulta, more lifrarpylsa, hákarl, and blóðmör

Saltkjöt

Svið. The tongue tastes Ok. You eat the skin too.

Baked brains with peanuts, and ice cream. Ok, ok, so that's just an apple bake :)

Many thanks to Jó's aunt for providing us with this food :)

More snow!

So we keep getting more and more snow. We're not talking about massive amounts, but still on many days we get a few more inches.

After getting up late from bed on a lazy Saturday, Jó and I went for a walk on the SW coast of Reykjavík. We ended up by a spot there with some disused buildings, that were once used for drying fish. There were also pulleys and tracks leading to the sea, to pull boats/fish.

Small tree

Snowy yard

Abandoned Christmas tree

Abandoned equipment

Pulley

Tracks

Shacks

Nets

Looking in

Corrugated iron, graffiti, snow

Angelica, from above

The popular neighborhood ice cream store. They have two vanilla flavors, "Old" and "New". Notice the line of people. And the snow.

A couple of geese we saw on the way back

Our gloves, made by Jó's aunt :)

Snow!

For a place called Iceland, you'd think we get a lot of snow. But while it snows sometimes, it's usually a light coating, and it disappears quickly. Or it turns into very slippery ice (the temperature often oscillates around 0 degrees, so the ice melts and refreezes).

But not last night! We got a pretty decent snowfall, maybe 6 inches. So Jó and I did what we had to do... A snowman!

Our car was getting covered pretty well

The snowman! The pink background and slight fuzziness is due to the lack of flash. Trust me, it was dark.

For an idea of scale, here is our lovely model Jó (sporting an Inuit hat) beside the snowman

Isn't he just likable? I think he has a very approachable smile.