{"id":109114,"date":"2015-01-28T13:30:54","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T13:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.golf1.is\/?p=109114"},"modified":"2015-05-01T22:37:31","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T22:37:31","slug":"icelands-ugly-food-festival-thorrablot-started-jan-23rd-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/icelands-ugly-food-festival-thorrablot-started-jan-23rd-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland\u00b4s Ugly Food Festival (\u00deorrabl\u00f3t) started Jan 23rd 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest Iceland Times there is an interesting article about the \u201eUgly Food Festival” in Iceland; in Icelandic called \u00deorrabl\u00f3t.\u00a0\u00a0\u00deorri being the old Icelandic word for winter – a\u00f0 the noun bl\u00f3t meaning festival so actually instead of the insulting \u201eUgly Food Festival” – \u00deorrabl\u00f3t should be referred to as the Winter Food Festival in Iceland.<\/p>\n

The food served on a \u00deorrabl\u00f3t isn\u00b4t perhaps very appetizing to foreigners – but it reminds us Icelanders what we had to eat while under the control of another nation, when we weren\u00b4t free … and that is an ugly situation to be in. \u00a0 What is being servered at the Winter Food Festival in Iceland is what used to be the poor peoples meals in the old days. \u00a0And most Icelanders were poor and oppressed; under the thumb of the Danish rulers.<\/p>\n

What the poor people ate were all parts of the animals that no one wanted to buy (f.x. The head of the sheep, it\u00b4s testicles a.s.o.). \u00a0Also the food reflects lack of means to conserve food – it was sometimes simply left to rot, f.x. the shark, but to hungry, poor people even the stinking shark was a feast.<\/p>\n

It is perhaps more glorified to imagine us Icelanders to be eating the same food at the Winter Food Festival as our victorious Viking ancestors but the truth is that this is the food our ancestors ate after Iceland lost its independence in 1262 and until we got it back in 1944; it has the ugly taste of oppresion and total lack of freedom. Today we just eat \u00deorramatur or \u201eWinterfood” to remind us of older times.<\/p>\n

\"Ein<\/a>

Ein me\u00f0 \u00f6llu<\/p><\/div>\n

The Icelanders favorite snack is the American hot dog which we\u00b4ve turned into our own and call \u201eEin me\u00f0 \u00f6llu” (lit. One with all). \u00a0This is a wiener on a bun with 5 ingreedients (that is if it\u00b4s supposed to be a \u201eone with all”): Ketchup, Mustard, fried onions, raw onions and remoulade (a mayo type condiment). \u00a0This is the taste of freedom the US and in fact Allies brought with them in 1944 for us Icelanders …. and we love.<\/p>\n

Here goes the Iceland Times article about the \u201eUgly Food Festival”:<\/em><\/p>\n

The month of \u00deorri begins on the 23rd of January which is B\u00f3ndadagur, (Husband\u2019s Day) and ends on Konudagur (Women\u2019s Day) marking that special time of year known as\u00a0\u00deorrabl\u00f3t<\/em>, where Icelanders feast on ugly food in every pocket of the country.\u00a0Bl\u00f3t<\/em>\u00a0= a festival held in honour of a Norse god, in this case,\u00a0\u00deor.<\/em><\/p>\n

The food that is served is called\u00a0\u00deorramatur\u00a0<\/em>(mat=food) and includes boiled sheep head, pickled ram\u2019s testicles, blood pudding, liver pudding,\u00a0hangikj\u00f6t<\/em>\u00a0(smoked lamb) and the most offensive of them all, rotten shark. (heads up- it\u2019s the little pale cubes in the photo above served in their own plastic container). If you are invited to a \u00deorrabl\u00f3t celebration, there will often be other, more, um\u2026 normal foods offered for the squeamish (that\u2019s me!) such as smoked salmon,\u00a0rugbrau\u00f0<\/em>\u00a0(rye bread), and\u00a0flatk\u00f6kur<\/em>, also known as\u00a0flatbrau\u00f0<\/em>\u00a0or flat bread, the Icelandic version of unleavened bread which dates back to Icelandic Settlement in 874AD.<\/p>\n

The first \u00deorrabl\u00f3t was held by the association of Icelandic students in Copenhagen in 1873, but did not become widely celebrated until the 1960s when a Reykjavik restaurant offered traditional food that was more commonly eaten in the countryside. Neatly coinciding with the rise in tide of nationalistic sentiment in the mid 20th century, the \u00deorrabl\u00f3t tradition gained traction and is now a popular mid-winter event.<\/p>\n

Of course, if you have grown up with this kind of thing, the nostalgia for it will be with you forever. But for the rest of us\u2026.<\/p>\n

Try it at your own risk!<\/p>\n

The abovementioned article was published in Icelandic Times and you can access the original article by CLICKING HERE:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest Iceland Times there is an interesting article about the \u201eUgly Food Festival” in Iceland; in Icelandic called \u00deorrabl\u00f3t.\u00a0\u00a0\u00deorri being the old Icelandic word for winter – a\u00f0 the noun bl\u00f3t meaning festival so actually instead of the insulting \u201eUgly Food Festival” – \u00deorrabl\u00f3t should be referred to as the Winter Food Festival in Iceland. The food served on a \u00deorrabl\u00f3t isn\u00b4t perhaps very appetizing to foreigners – but it reminds us Icelanders what we had to eat while under the control of another nation, when we weren\u00b4t free … and that is an ugly situation to be in. \u00a0 What is being servered at the Winter Food Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":109115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","cat-7-id"],"acf":[],"views":2918,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golf1.is\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}