Day 24-þorrablót

   January 28-The weather has warmed here and rain fell much of the day.  Consequently, the snowpack that was obvious in pictures from recent posts has dwindled dramatically.  The girls' snowpeople are completely gone and our apartment now looks out over a sea of lichen-covered lava rocks, rather than an undulating field of snow.  Because of the weather we all stayed inside today, and Alex ran off in the afternoon to play with Sigurlaug Sól for a short while.
   Magnús and Signý came by a little after 8 pm to pick up Sally and me, so we could attend the þorrablót at the gymnasium that is part of the girls' school in Varmaland.  Þorrablót is a celebration that dates back 1000 years when the Norse gods were still worshipped here.  Ostensibly, it was meant to convince the gods to allow the Sun and spring to return.  After enduring two months of the darkest months in Iceland, I imagine it also was a good opportunity for communities to come together and cheer each other up as winter stores dwindled and the possibility of starvation loomed large.  Today, the þorrablót feasts still allow communities can gather together, feast, and party.  The fear of running out of food no longer exists, but the modern Icelanders pay homage to their ancestors during the þorrablót by mostly eating  historical foods that they no longer eat on a regular basis.  One reason for the change in diets is modern affluence.  It is no longer necessary for them save every edible (and inedible) part of an animal that is butchered in order to survive through each winter.  Also, one of the biggest wintertime gastronomical changes between the modern Icelancers and their forbearers came about due to the arrival of modern freezers.  Most of the food that their Viking ancestors would have had available to eat at this time of year would have had to have been preserved in some manner, most likely by being desiccated, salted, smoked, pickled, or buried.  Now that we can simply throw food in the freezer to store it for long periods, these methods have become less necessary and the tastes that they impart to food have become less common.
   Hákarl (shark) is the most prominent food that people associate with þorrablót.  As I understand it, fresh shark meat is actually poisonous, so to make it edible, it is buried and left to rot for three months or more.  When the time comes to eat the shark, it is disinterred, cut up, and served.  Yep, you read that right.  The food most closely associated with þorrablót is putrefied shark meat and it was the first food we got served when we walked in the door.  We were given a toothpick to spear a small cube of hákarl and a shot of brennivín, the traditional Icelandic schnapps, to chase it down.  For all the hype surrounding it, hákarl was not that terrible, although Signý told us that this was fairly mild-tasting hákarl.  Nonetheless, I did not go back to fill my plate with it like some of the natives did.  Brennivín deserves mention here as well.  Sally and I had bought a small bottle of it during a trip to the liquor store in Borgarnes (which is state-owned, like all liquor stores in Iceland.)  Therefore, we had had the chance to try it previously.  We would say that the brennivín is almost worse than hákarl.  Descriptions of it say that it has a caraway seed flavor and is high in alcohol content.  I don't know much about the first part, but I would agree with the second part, because it burns a path from the mouth to the stomach when you drink it.  That probably explains its pairing with the hákarl!
   This particular þorrablót is for the small rural communities that surround Varmaland.  There were about 15 attendees who hailed from Bifröst, and we knew about half of them, including the cook and Spencer's teachers from kindergarten.  We were all seated together at the Bifröst table and again people were more than willing to converse in English to include us in the conversation.  A number of presentations were given in which the speaker poked fun at locals and satired events that had transpired locally and nation-wide during the preceding year.  In some ways, it sounds like the Icelandic version of the yearly Sonofagunn plays that the Gunnison Arts Center puts on.  The speakers must have done a good job, because there was lots of laughter and applause, although we did not understand more than a dozen words spoken over the course of a couple hours.  We had also been given song sheets and Sally and I tried our best to read the words and somewhat sing along.  At one point a woman gave a short speech and then the ladies all rose and sang a song to the men.  The lady's husband then gave his own speech and we men all rose and sang a song to the ladies.  Based on my rudimentary translations of the songs, we simply sang each other's praises.
   The main meal was served buffet style, so we actually chose to put all of the following food on our plates and eat it:
-svíd: Half of a sheep's head (cut down the middle between the eyes) that was burned to remove the wool and then cooked.  We used our forks to pull meat off of the face.  It was actually quite tender and tasty, with a smoked taste.
-mashed turnips: yummy!
-pickled ram testicles, pressed into meatloaf-style cake: not particularly flavorful, but not particularly bad, either.
-slátur, which is basically the same thing as Scottish haggis: probably our least favorite dish
-pickled whale blubber: pretty tasteless and rubbery.
-rye bread with butter: really yummy.
-blood pudding: also not particularly tasty.
-meat cooked in pectin or gelatin to make a loaf: pretty good
-baby potatoes in a sweet cream sauce: yummy.
-smoked lamb: very tasty.
-harðfiskur: dried fish, which is widely available and eaten by most Icelanders like we eat potato chips in the States;  Sally and I do not find it to appetizing, although Magnús informed us that night that they are much tastier (and much less healthy) when smjör (butter) is spread on them.
-most of the meats were also available in a "soured" form, where they had been left for a month in buttermilk and allowed to ferment: our friends advised we pass these by, so we did.
-lamb stew over rice for people who wanted nothing to do with the historical foods: also very tasty.
   As for drinks, only the initial shot of brennivín was provided, so everyone arrived with plastic shopping bags loaded with liquor (and the occasional pop for the drivers.)  We had brought along a bottle of wine and our bottle of brennivín, in the hopes that others would drink it.  Everyone shared what they had brought, so we got to try some other liquor.  Spencer's teacher, Ingibjörg, brought Opal, which is a licorice-flavored vodka.  We preferred it over the brennivín, but the licorice flavor was a bit too intense.  Pálmer brought a number of þorrablót beers, but his wife, Emma, and the others agreed that they were the beers normally brewed by the breweries with þorrablót labels slapped on as marketing gimmicks.  Nonetheless, they were tasty ambers and browns.  However, another bottle Pálmer brought particularly caught my eye.  It had the shape and cork that are typical of Belgian beers, so I asked about it and he told me that it is a Belgian-style beer that is brewed in Iceland!  He shared it when he opened it and it was a nice dubbel that was quite tasty.
   After the food had been eaten, a band started playing and the dancing commenced.  We ended up sitting at our table, drinking and talking to the Bifröst contingent.  Time flies when you are having fun and it seemed that we had only been there a couple hours, when Magnús said he was ready to go.  We trooped out to the car and headed for home.  The parking lot was still almost full, so I do not know how late the party raged, but when we got home it was 1 am!