10 April 2006
The chapter about mutton´s testicals, shark´s meat smelling of ammoniac and all the other ‘Thorablot’ yammies…..
Sheep´s head (including the eyes and teeth), mutton´s tongue, mutton´s testicals, shark´s meat with the strong smell of ammoniac, and…well, all this and a couple of similar traditional icelandic yammies – rather weird for the central European tastebuds – are being relished during this special time of the year starting in the middle of January by almost all the Icelanders and a bunch of foreigners present.
But let´s start nicely in order.
On January 20th began so called THOR (see above the name of the event called THORABLOT; as it comes from the same stem). Long time ago, this period of the year, represented one month in the Icelandic calendar.
The thing is that Icelanders did not know our usual Januaries or Augusts, but had their special months (lasting a little more than 30 days). Most of these months name were inspired by the mythological gods (such as Thorir or Goa, etc.). All these months were very much connected with the weather of those old times and were not matching with our months. That is why, Thor for example begins 20th of January and not 1st of January.
During those old, old times, when the weather in Iceland was really harsh and it was rather cold, there was definitely not an abundance of livestock, but the opposite was the case. And not only the amount of livestock was the problem, but also the way how to store the crops and the food. As a matter of fact, human being is very creative, and the Icelandic Viking even more and thus thanks to the trials and errors, Icelanders have reached to the following conclusions:
It is dangerous to eat raw shark meat. However, once it is left resting in big tubs (there are still disputes, whether the piss was used or not in the past) for some months, it loses its poisonous part and can be fully enjoyed. When the ammoniac odor starts coming out of the tubs and the meat gets brownish, then Vikings are sure that the right time for the full enjoyment of shark’s meat has come.
On top of that, ever searching Vikings have come up with another clever recipe regarding the meat storage. As you can understand, the smart way of storing meat was one of the key things in the time of no electricity and no refrigerators. They´ve figured that using a sour liquid (side product of the dairy called SKYR – similar to yogurt) helps a big deal. The recipe is rather simple. After having chopped and processed all parts (including the head and testicals mentioned already) of the killed animal (usually sheep), it was enough to marinate the pieces of meat. Just to give you and idea, simply imagine 6 pieces of testicals in the whole, marinated and then kept in the cold place.
In addition to the above, smoking was also quite a popular way of storing the lamb meat. And just to paint the picture for you. Well, the Viking took the sheep´s head, then smoked it and then right before eating it, they would just boil it. So imagine a whole sheep´s head being served including the eyes. Yes, yes, you read it well, including the eyes.
Last but not least, we have to mention the fish, of course. Apart from the fact that fish was a part of everyday menu, Vikings have come up with the idea to dry some parts of the fish and as the result have so called dry fish. Ideally, the fish fillets would be hanging on racks somewhere next to the sea and thus would get naturally salted.
And why Thorablot these days at all? What is it all about? Well, at the beginning of the last century, thus it happened that some Icelanders living on Copenhagen felt like remembering the above mentioned traditional food that they used to grow up with. As the result of this, they simply organized a special evening solely dedicated to the celebration of the old ways of food processing as described above.
Thorablot evenings vary depending on each town (village) traditions, but basically it follows the following pattern:
Local communities, be it villages or just small settlements, appoint a committee each year, that is responsible for organizing the whole evening. The evening consists of the entertaining part (usually self irony related to the locals, played in the form of sketches or monologues or short drama pieces, songs, etc.) and eating and drinking part. On top of that, there is a dancing part, of course which usually comes after the eating and entertaining part. The fun starts around eight in the evening and flows all the way till five or six in the morning. All those participating are smartly dressed and are full of glamour and glitter.
I was lucky (just as one can be in Iceland) and was privileged enough to be invited to two Thorablots. One of them took place in the east fjords of Iceland, in the magical town called Seydisfjordur, twice as smalls as Dalvik. This picturesque place is an arrival point for those who reach Iceland by boat, and believe me, it truly is a special place that will catch you from your first step there. The other Thorablot was at ‘ours’…so to speak. Not exactly in Dalvik, but very close to it, in one of the nearby valleys that belongs to magical parts of Dalvik´s surroundings. Dalvik as such had to cancel its own Thorablott due to gradual decrease of the participants.
No need to point out, that my first Thorablot ever was flowing in the spirit of: “Try everything, no matter how disgustingly it might smell.” And even though I have tried everything, I have to say that I´m keeping only a couple of specials in my Icelandic menu. Neither the mutton´s testicals, nor the sharks´meat belong there. Just for your better understanding:
Shark´s meat is being served as a cocktail snack on a toothpick. As soon as you lift the shark´s snack and draw it near your mouth, a draft of the strong ammoniac smell blows your face and that´s the point when the central European tastebuds get stubborn and you hesitate for a moment whether you really want to be a hero. Well, based on the Icelandic advice, it´s important to have some locally distilled liquor at hand so that you can nicely down the piece of strong ammoniac flesh, once you have it in your mouth. It´s good to use BRENIVIN alias Black death belonging to one of those strong ones in Iceland. Well, and once you have it all in your mouth trying to down it all, you try to flow nicely with the ‘enjoyment’ hoping that you´d not need to be flown to the bathroom.
Well, in my case, there was no need for the toilet, but I did have to have a shot, brbrbrbrbrbrbrb. To paint the entire picture, especially for the female part of the readers, I´m sure you can all imagine the odor of the hair colours containing ammoniac. Well, so just let your fantasy work and imagine that I had in my mouth sth very similar to this that you usually have on your head when you´re dying the hair…and I even bravely swallowed it …
The taste of the testicals is not worth describing as I think it´s more than enough to say that I did not like them at all and had really hard times to make myself swallow that one and only gulp.
All in all, the entertaining part was really amusing and enjoyable and there was always someone pleasant to dance with (at each Thorablot, there were around 350 locals present). And in the case of Seydisfjordur, the above, meant pretty much the whole village. I adequately relished all the bits of the both blots. The one close to Dalvik was special when it came down to food. The thing is that everybody present brought his/her own food. People were coming with big baskets full of specials described above and some salads and special local bread with it. Concerning the fact, that the Dalvikian Thorablott was the second one in a row for me, I stuck to my favourites and did not force myself to suffer in relation to the goodie such as shark and so on.
To conclude the whole chapter, I have to point out that not all the Icelanders render homage to the shark and testicals and sheeps´heads including the eyes. But there are still many of them who were brought up with this special food and love it just as much as for example Slovaks love HALUSKY and Czechs BRAMBORAKY (potato dumplings).
All about the journey back from Seydisfjordur and about all that we saw and the places we stopped at will come in the next chapter. ( be patient dear readers!)
Just to draw you in, we also passed a bit of the Icelandic moon country, where the mud is bubbling constantly and the Earth has been endlessly eructing the chimneys of the steam….
Sheep´s head (including the eyes and teeth), mutton´s tongue, mutton´s testicals, shark´s meat with the strong smell of ammoniac, and…well, all this and a couple of similar traditional icelandic yammies – rather weird for the central European tastebuds – are being relished during this special time of the year starting in the middle of January by almost all the Icelanders and a bunch of foreigners present.
But let´s start nicely in order.
On January 20th began so called THOR (see above the name of the event called THORABLOT; as it comes from the same stem). Long time ago, this period of the year, represented one month in the Icelandic calendar.
The thing is that Icelanders did not know our usual Januaries or Augusts, but had their special months (lasting a little more than 30 days). Most of these months name were inspired by the mythological gods (such as Thorir or Goa, etc.). All these months were very much connected with the weather of those old times and were not matching with our months. That is why, Thor for example begins 20th of January and not 1st of January.
During those old, old times, when the weather in Iceland was really harsh and it was rather cold, there was definitely not an abundance of livestock, but the opposite was the case. And not only the amount of livestock was the problem, but also the way how to store the crops and the food. As a matter of fact, human being is very creative, and the Icelandic Viking even more and thus thanks to the trials and errors, Icelanders have reached to the following conclusions:
It is dangerous to eat raw shark meat. However, once it is left resting in big tubs (there are still disputes, whether the piss was used or not in the past) for some months, it loses its poisonous part and can be fully enjoyed. When the ammoniac odor starts coming out of the tubs and the meat gets brownish, then Vikings are sure that the right time for the full enjoyment of shark’s meat has come.
On top of that, ever searching Vikings have come up with another clever recipe regarding the meat storage. As you can understand, the smart way of storing meat was one of the key things in the time of no electricity and no refrigerators. They´ve figured that using a sour liquid (side product of the dairy called SKYR – similar to yogurt) helps a big deal. The recipe is rather simple. After having chopped and processed all parts (including the head and testicals mentioned already) of the killed animal (usually sheep), it was enough to marinate the pieces of meat. Just to give you and idea, simply imagine 6 pieces of testicals in the whole, marinated and then kept in the cold place.
In addition to the above, smoking was also quite a popular way of storing the lamb meat. And just to paint the picture for you. Well, the Viking took the sheep´s head, then smoked it and then right before eating it, they would just boil it. So imagine a whole sheep´s head being served including the eyes. Yes, yes, you read it well, including the eyes.
Last but not least, we have to mention the fish, of course. Apart from the fact that fish was a part of everyday menu, Vikings have come up with the idea to dry some parts of the fish and as the result have so called dry fish. Ideally, the fish fillets would be hanging on racks somewhere next to the sea and thus would get naturally salted.
And why Thorablot these days at all? What is it all about? Well, at the beginning of the last century, thus it happened that some Icelanders living on Copenhagen felt like remembering the above mentioned traditional food that they used to grow up with. As the result of this, they simply organized a special evening solely dedicated to the celebration of the old ways of food processing as described above.
Thorablot evenings vary depending on each town (village) traditions, but basically it follows the following pattern:
Local communities, be it villages or just small settlements, appoint a committee each year, that is responsible for organizing the whole evening. The evening consists of the entertaining part (usually self irony related to the locals, played in the form of sketches or monologues or short drama pieces, songs, etc.) and eating and drinking part. On top of that, there is a dancing part, of course which usually comes after the eating and entertaining part. The fun starts around eight in the evening and flows all the way till five or six in the morning. All those participating are smartly dressed and are full of glamour and glitter.
I was lucky (just as one can be in Iceland) and was privileged enough to be invited to two Thorablots. One of them took place in the east fjords of Iceland, in the magical town called Seydisfjordur, twice as smalls as Dalvik. This picturesque place is an arrival point for those who reach Iceland by boat, and believe me, it truly is a special place that will catch you from your first step there. The other Thorablot was at ‘ours’…so to speak. Not exactly in Dalvik, but very close to it, in one of the nearby valleys that belongs to magical parts of Dalvik´s surroundings. Dalvik as such had to cancel its own Thorablott due to gradual decrease of the participants.
No need to point out, that my first Thorablot ever was flowing in the spirit of: “Try everything, no matter how disgustingly it might smell.” And even though I have tried everything, I have to say that I´m keeping only a couple of specials in my Icelandic menu. Neither the mutton´s testicals, nor the sharks´meat belong there. Just for your better understanding:
Shark´s meat is being served as a cocktail snack on a toothpick. As soon as you lift the shark´s snack and draw it near your mouth, a draft of the strong ammoniac smell blows your face and that´s the point when the central European tastebuds get stubborn and you hesitate for a moment whether you really want to be a hero. Well, based on the Icelandic advice, it´s important to have some locally distilled liquor at hand so that you can nicely down the piece of strong ammoniac flesh, once you have it in your mouth. It´s good to use BRENIVIN alias Black death belonging to one of those strong ones in Iceland. Well, and once you have it all in your mouth trying to down it all, you try to flow nicely with the ‘enjoyment’ hoping that you´d not need to be flown to the bathroom.
Well, in my case, there was no need for the toilet, but I did have to have a shot, brbrbrbrbrbrbrb. To paint the entire picture, especially for the female part of the readers, I´m sure you can all imagine the odor of the hair colours containing ammoniac. Well, so just let your fantasy work and imagine that I had in my mouth sth very similar to this that you usually have on your head when you´re dying the hair…and I even bravely swallowed it …
The taste of the testicals is not worth describing as I think it´s more than enough to say that I did not like them at all and had really hard times to make myself swallow that one and only gulp.
All in all, the entertaining part was really amusing and enjoyable and there was always someone pleasant to dance with (at each Thorablot, there were around 350 locals present). And in the case of Seydisfjordur, the above, meant pretty much the whole village. I adequately relished all the bits of the both blots. The one close to Dalvik was special when it came down to food. The thing is that everybody present brought his/her own food. People were coming with big baskets full of specials described above and some salads and special local bread with it. Concerning the fact, that the Dalvikian Thorablott was the second one in a row for me, I stuck to my favourites and did not force myself to suffer in relation to the goodie such as shark and so on.
To conclude the whole chapter, I have to point out that not all the Icelanders render homage to the shark and testicals and sheeps´heads including the eyes. But there are still many of them who were brought up with this special food and love it just as much as for example Slovaks love HALUSKY and Czechs BRAMBORAKY (potato dumplings).
All about the journey back from Seydisfjordur and about all that we saw and the places we stopped at will come in the next chapter. ( be patient dear readers!)
Just to draw you in, we also passed a bit of the Icelandic moon country, where the mud is bubbling constantly and the Earth has been endlessly eructing the chimneys of the steam….
