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Icelandic Foodways

Íslensk matargerð

National

The food of a volcanic North Atlantic island with no forest worth the name, no grain worth growing for most of its history, and one of the richest fishing grounds on earth offshore. LAMB from sheep grazed loose on the highland all summer; COD and the rest of the sea; SKYR; dairy from a single small cattle breed; harðfiskur; rúgbrauð; and a preservation tradition — drying, salting, smoking, whey-souring, freezing — that was not a choice. ⚠ NORDIC, and North Atlantic rather than Scandinavian in the geographic sense.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Icelanders community documented

Languages: Icelandic

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • part of North Atlantic Foodways documented
  • related to British Foodways documented

    Gaelic settlement at the start, the salt-fish trade with Britain, the wartime occupation, and the Cod Wars.

  • related to Danish Foodways documented

    Danish rule to 1944 and the trade monopoly of 1602-1787; Danish baking and Christmas forms came by that route.

  • related to Faroese Foodways documented

    Two North Atlantic sheep-and-fish societies with closely related languages and comparable preservation problems.

  • related to Greenlandic Foodways documented

    The Norse settlement of Greenland went from Iceland, and the two countries remain closely tied.

  • related to New Nordic Cuisine documented
  • related to Norwegian Foodways documented

    Settlement and North Atlantic fisheries history; Icelandic cuisine is Nordic, not Scandinavian.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • influenced Historical Norse Foodways documented

    Iceland was settled from Norway and the British Isles and the line is continuous — which is not the same as saying modern Icelandic food is Viking food.

  • related to Danish Foodways documented

    Iceland was under Danish rule until 1944 and under the Danish trade monopoly from 1602 to 1787; Danish baking and Christmas forms entered Iceland by that route.

  • related to Faroese Foodways documented
  • related to Greenlandic Foodways documented
  • related to Norse Greenland documented

    The settlers came from Iceland. ⚠ The settlements ended; they did not become modern Greenland.

  • related to Norwegian Foodways documented

    Iceland was settled from Norway and was under Norwegian and then Danish-Norwegian rule; the dried fish, sheep and whey traditions are genuinely cognate.

  • related to Prairie Foodways documented

    Gimli in Manitoba, the largest Icelandic settlement outside Iceland, and vínarterta.

  • related to Swedish Foodways possible

    Nordic institutional kinship rather than close culinary relationship.

Regional cuisines

Dishes

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.