They’ve also got a specific feast day, Þorrablót, to celebrate those old foods. Nobody eats them anymore because they have refrigeration now and all that entails for freshness, but for centuries they were the food of survival in a harsh climate.
Icelanders fool tourists into eating the putrefied shark because it’s funny, but they still have a degree of reverence or respect for the cultural background of that food.
It’s an interesting history but it kind of boils down to:
Pagans flee Norway from religious persecution, settle Iceland
Pagans establish democratic society
Leaving means falling under jurisdiction of a Christian kingdom
And life is just as shitty elsewhere
Eventually Iceland converted to Christianity and became a formal territory of Norway and then Denmark later, but at that point the inhabitants had been there for centuries and it was their land and home. Many were too poor to leave regardless, and many owned substantial immovable resources like herds of sheep or horses, or swathes of land.
And then later an Icelandic nationalism movement led to national pride in their identity as Icelanders, not as danish subjects, and that led to an independence movement which eventually led to an independent Iceland.
Which proves my point, Icelanders understand the full cultural implications and the nuances of both venerating the food and making light of it. Whereas the Redditor only knows “funny fish food bad.”
They’ve also got a specific feast day, Þorrablót, to celebrate those old foods. Nobody eats them anymore because they have refrigeration now and all that entails for freshness, but for centuries they were the food of survival in a harsh climate.
Icelanders fool tourists into eating the putrefied shark because it’s funny, but they still have a degree of reverence or respect for the cultural background of that food.
you gotta respect people who could survive in rotto-fermented fish and never once thought they should move to balmy scotland or whatever…
Funnily, there’s an account that when Norwegian settlers got to Iceland there were Scottish missionaries already living there
It’s an interesting history but it kind of boils down to:
Eventually Iceland converted to Christianity and became a formal territory of Norway and then Denmark later, but at that point the inhabitants had been there for centuries and it was their land and home. Many were too poor to leave regardless, and many owned substantial immovable resources like herds of sheep or horses, or swathes of land.
And then later an Icelandic nationalism movement led to national pride in their identity as Icelanders, not as danish subjects, and that led to an independence movement which eventually led to an independent Iceland.
Which proves my point, Icelanders understand the full cultural implications and the nuances of both venerating the food and making light of it. Whereas the
Redditor only knows “funny fish food bad.”