Today is Bóndadagur here in Iceland, meaning that if you are female and have a husband or partner (male) you’re supposed to do a whole bunch of nice things for them. It’s the equivalent of Valentine’s day, only those crafty Icelanders have gone one step further and have two such days – one for the husband, one for the wife. [My time will come, heh]. Which is kind of nice, because you get to spoil and be spoiled in turn.

Today also happens to mark the start of the traditional month of Þorri according to the old Icelandic calendar. To commemorate this the Icelanders devised a feast called Þorrablót – which in fact is also traditional but has undergone some changes, specifically in that nowadays a lot of putrid food gets eaten. Now, whether it is coincidence that this falls upon the very same day as the day you’re supposed to spoil your husband… remains unanswered. ‘Cause the kind of putrid food you’re supposed to imbibe has become kind of a machoism and most men have it way up high on their must-lists for this particular day.

YT, therefore, has dutifully gone out and bought some cured shark and pickled whale blubber to make EPI really happy. This is the same cured shark delicacy that some will recognize from those ubiquitous ‘weird-Icelanders’ myths, which sometimes report that the shark is pissed upon and then buried in the ground for many weeks before being deemed fit for eating. And, indeed, this was the way they used to do it [although to be frank I’ve never heard of anybody really pissing on any section of shark. Thankfully.] Whatever: eating a small dice-sized piece of said shark is one of those CRIPES! experiences that will put hair on your chest bigtime. In fact, YT has just imbibed about five such pieces and can feel the hair sprouting forth already.

The same cannot be said for the pickled whale blubber, however, which is just exquisite and in fact used to be one of YT’s favourite foods when she was a child. Call me weird – I don’t care. Whale-eater – pfft! That is some seriously good shit.

This, however, is the extent of our culinary weirdness this evening – we’re going to pass on the singed sheeps’ heads, ram’s testicles and intestines. Instead we shall return to the Civilized World and have lamb filets with sautéed apples, gourmet mushrooms and rucola. And copious amounts of red wine. And Ben & Jerry’s for dessert. Yo.

THE WEATHER

See yesterday’s report. It was exactly the same, except that the temps were a slight bit lower. As in, cold. But a gorgeous day, pure sun-drenched glory. The sun came up at 10.39 and set at 16.40.