Iceland (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Fran Parnell [27]
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www.statice.is – the Statistics Iceland site has thousands of fascinating facts and figures about Iceland.
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Contemporary artists to look out for include pop-art icon Erró (Guðmundur Guðmundsson), who has donated his entire collection to Reykjavík Art Museum’s Hafnarhúsið; mural and glass artist Sjofn Har; and Tryggvi Ólafsson, whose strikingly colourful abstracts depicting Icelandic scenes hang in national galleries in Reykjavík, Sweden and Denmark.
Sculpture is very well represented in Iceland, with works dotting parks, gardens and galleries across the country, and its most famous sculptors all have museums dedicated to them in Reykjavík. Notable exponents include Einar Jónsson (1874–1954; Click here), whose mystical works dwell on death and resurrection; Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893–1982; Click here), whose tactile work is very wide-ranging but tends to celebrate Iceland, its stories and its people; and Sigurjón Ólafsson (1908-92; Click here), who specialised in busts but also dabbled in abstract forms.
Reykjavík heaves with modern-art showrooms full of love-’em-or-hate-’em installations – ask the tourist office for a full list of galleries, and Click here.
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Food & Drink
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STAPLES & SPECIALITIES
DRINKS
WHERE TO EAT & DRINK
VEGETARIANS & VEGANS
HABITS & CUSTOMS
EAT YOUR WORDS
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For much of its history, Iceland was a poverty-stricken hinterland where food was solely about survival. Its traditional dishes reflect a ‘waste not, want not’ frugality and are viewed by foreigners less as sustenance and more as body parts from a slasher movie (Click here).
Icelandic farmer-fishermen had a hard time: sparse soil and long, harsh winters meant crop growing was limited, and those who lived by the coast wrested a dangerous living from the sea and shore. Sheep, fish and sea birds and their eggs were common foods, and every part of every creature was eaten – fresh, or preserved by drying, salting, smoking, pickling in whey or even burying underground, in the case of shark meat.
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During the filming of Dancer in the Dark, director Lars von Trier was supposedly so brutal to singer Björk that he drove her to the brink of sanity – she apparently ate her own cardigan.
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In terms of staples, little has changed over the centuries: fish, seafood, lamb, bread and simple vegetables, such as potatoes, are the basis of a typical Icelandic diet. The way in which these ingredients are prepared, however, has changed drastically over the last 25 years. It’s now a source of national pride to serve up traditional food as tastily and imaginatively as possible, using methods borrowed from fashionable culinary traditions around the world.
There’s no denying that dining out in Iceland is expensive, but it’s worth spending a little extra to try some of the nation’s top restaurants. If you’re being determinedly frugal, you’ll almost certainly be eating French fries, hot dogs, hamburgers and pizzas.
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STAPLES & SPECIALITIES
Fish & Seafood
Fish has always been the mainstay of the Icelandic diet. Fish served in restaurants or on sale in markets is always fresh, and when cooked it usually comes boiled, pan-fried, baked or grilled.
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Check out 50 Crazy Things To Eat in Iceland, by Snæfroður Ingadóttir and Þorvaldur Örn Kristinundsson, for a few fun pictorials of Iceland’s traditional eats.
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In the past, Icelanders merely kept the cheeks and tongues of þorskur (cod) – something of a delicacy – and exported the rest; but today you’ll commonly find cod fillets on the menu, along with ýsa (haddock), bleikja (Arctic char) and popular meaty-textured skötuselur (monkfish). Other fish include lú