Gleðileg jól - snow, fire and excitement

Norðfjörður

Happy Christmas everyone. Gleðileg jól.

We are in Neskaupstaður which is a town set in a deep fjörd (Norðfjörður) on the east coast of Iceland. I´ve been here once before, in February last year for a trip to the neighbouring uninhabited Viðfjörður. Then it was warm enough, rather strangely, to be outside comfortably in short sleeves. Now, returning in December for Christmas and New Year to spend time with Óli´s brother and family there is ice and snow. Ice coated the road all the way to Kirkjubærklaustur, around a third of the way from Reykjavík to the east then as we drove along the coast passed Jökulsálón we felt as if we were driving through the night, the longest night of the year. Even in the pitch black of 4pm the ice-choked lagoon sparkled beautifully with blues and greys and the odd bright shimmering fairy-light on the icebergs as the full moon reflected off the glistening surfaces.

A walk in the snow

Now we´ve been here for almost a week. Snow fell on the 23rd to give us a white Christmas and like last year we opened our parcels after dinner on Christmas Eve, still making me feeling rather naughty breaking the childhood rule of not opening any presents until Christmas Day. This year, being with Icelandic and South African family the house was swarming with supernatural beings. Jólasveinarnir dropped by at night to leave presents in shoes for good boys and bigger parcels on the 24th and then on the night of the 24th or early morning of the 25th Santa made it to Iceland, flying down into the deep valley, thankfully missing the cold sea water and not slipping too badly on the ice to leave more presents beneath the tree and fill Christmas stockings. Then, K lost his first baby tooth and the tooth fairy left something under his pillow on the night of the 25th.

Where the tooth fairy lives

Today is the 29th and things are calming down. The best toys have been selected (torches and protective eye glasses meant for fireworks), the excitement is diminishing and the house has been spirit and sprite free for a few evenings running now. However, New Year nears and Óli and I have been helping setting up the fireworks display. Of course everyone will set fireworks off and the town will be wreathed in smoke but before midnight, from the sneak preview of the size of the fireworks being laid out and placed into massive barrels, I expect there will be a pretty good show from S and co. Fingers crossed that my fuses don´t fail.

Big bomb, happy boy

It is good to be out of Reykjavík and to see the snow-clad hills all around. I will however, be quite glad to be rid of the supernatural visits for a year! You would too if they were stealing things from the fridge and sniffing around doors, worrying the sheep and licking your pots and pans!

Approaching Yule

It is 8.30am on a Sunday and I am uncharacteristically awake due to Óli´s shift patterns just now. It is quiet and still feels like night (it will be dark until around 11am and then get dark again around 2-3pm) so once I´ve had my dose of tea for the morning it is quite possible to con myself into thinking that it is night and my night-owl can spring into action and start writing. Of course, the papers of "geomorphology of a glacial foreland" and "sedimentology of jökulhlaups" lay untouched .. perhaps a little too early and not enough tea for those. However, while they eat away at my conscience, I can finally find some time to write here for a change.

Mulled wine

Christmas is just 8/9 days away depending on which celebrations you opt for.. 24th in Iceland, 25th back home. I try to get both in, being greedy and wanting two Christmases a year. So, today there is little to do other than prepare and go Christmas shopping and really what else can one do when there is snow outside and the shops have candles lit outside their doors and the cookies and mince pies are all ready, the cake is being fed with brandy and we´ve already had our British Christmas dinner. We started early with a small party in the second week in January and ate turkey and trimmings and drank mulled wine into the night.

It was a good celebration of the end of a very hectic time. Ceilidh classes and the ceilidh night had filled up so much time but I am so glad to say that it was a great success. The band were brilliant, giving up their time for free to play because of a love for this lively, jumpy, toe-tapping music. 60 people came and actually our biggest problem was that the room was too small. So we are now dreaming of holding it in Iðno.. a real stage, a big dance floor and beautiful decorations .. no scruffy edge of the world stuff next time. However, we´re not sure if we have enough spare limbs to afford that. Still, the first mini ceilidh was held in a warehouse with stage props, dust and old, unwashed cups scattering the dark corners, in an out of the way place between the oil tanks for the ships and a building site. The next place was an old wartime-inspired nissan hut by the thermal beach, a bit easier to find but building works over the winter meant you had to navigate the mud-bath, the swamp and search in the dark for a road which bore little resemblance to a road, even in Iceland.. Both excellent for their purpose and within our budget but I´d say we can only move up in the world.

I am dreaming of a resurrection of folk dance enthusiasm here .. though lets not call it folk dance please. I am searching for some other phrase - ceilidh is doing for now.. though it means nothing to most people. Any suggestions are most welcome. The phrases in use with other groups are folk dance or old dances.. neither of which seems to capture the lively nature of the thing! I also hope this can involve all ages and be something to help bring Icelanders and foreigners together more .. so far we´re doing fairly well with Scots, English, Norwegians, Icelanders, Slovaks, Russians, French, Mexicans, Swiss, Danes, Germans, Finns, Swedes.. and probably more, trying this thing out.

On holiday in Spain, wearing bellydance silk to a restaurant!

Bellydance sparkles - Margrét - picture from balletstelpur

Meanwhile I´ve been dancing belly dance and spend time peering around the stage wings being awe-inspired by the sparkly costumes of the other dancers at Kramhúsið´s Christmas show and I´ve been battling technology as the computer, the car and software at work refuse to behave. Many are helping to try to persuade them that the holidays are not yet here (thanks Óli, Egill and Anil). However, maybe these well-used and tired technological creatures are justified. The weather has been crazy with storms ripping the roofs of houses, tipping over lorries and requiring the radio stations to announce that people shouldn´t go out unless necessary and that children should be kept home from school. Seems strange for the capital area. Or maybe the car and computer have been struck by the Christmas holiday spirit and are on strike until after New Year .. or out shopping along with the rest of the country. Perhaps they are in a bookshop stuck in a queue as the whole nation tries to buy those essential expensive hardbacks with big glossy photos or the latest novels and poems by their neighbours!

Anyway.. I have things to do.. Christmas markets to visit and hot chocolate to drink.., oh yes and glacial forelands to be writing about.

Áramót - Hogmanay

Hogmanay or New Year´s Eve is a frenzy of explosions and fire in Iceland. The battery begins around the 27th of December and continues until around the end of January. Áramót itself is hard to describe.. explosions all around in built up areas. I was reminded of live TV broadcasts from war zones. A lovely old couple appeared on the TV news to say that they had phoned the emergency services to ask when the explosions would end but the police couldn´t help, so they filled a flask with coffee and hid in the their bathroom which had no windows until around 3am. Þór did the same.. we put his cage in the bath. I enjoyed it though was rather alarmed at the proximity to houses, cars, people. The boys bought a big cake called Katla for me .. so I got to see an eruption of Katla. Thankfully nobody was hurt. The fireworks picture above was taken close to midnight, but we started the evening by going to an bonfire where children were playing with rockets, then went to Óli´s uncle´s house where they set up a last hot air balloon. There was a wild west feeling to the street full of boys of all ages wielding flares and explosive devices and spoking cigars and drinking beer. Icelanders are mad (madly fun) and strangely there are still some of them alive to set the night sky alight and perhaps a few unwary obstacles that don´t run away fast enough.

Sparkles

Hot air balloons

In depth testing of hot air balloon engineering marked Christmas for Óli, Rikki and their Dad. They look beautiful but there is a hair raising element to watching a burning thing float over the houses of Reykjavík.

Smákökur - Christmas cookie competition

Advent and the lead up to Christmas in Iceland is a time for baking, as it is elsewhere. Here though there is a very special tradition of baking smákökur, small cakes or cookies. Not just one type but as many as you possibly can. The question isn´t have you baked your smákökur this year yet, it´s how many types have you baked and which ones? I don´t know how many there are, perhaps as many recipes as there are for cookies around the world but I spent this December being offered new and exciting cookies at work and at Óli´s family home and thoroughly enjoyed this cultural adventure. Some of the cookies must have origins abroad and some feel very Icelandic, with cinnamon taste. Rúsínukökur are one of my favourites and piparkökur are one of Óli´s so I include them here. Have a look here for some others (in Icelandic).

Rúsínukökur

225g plain flour, 200g butter or margarine, 180g porridge oats, 220g chopped raisins (we minced then in a .. well.. of course, a mincer), 460g sugar, 2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 eggs

Mix everything to together except the raisins. Add raisins to mix. Let the dough stand in the fridge for a day and bake the day after. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment (no need to butter baking sheet). Roll the dough into small balls about an inch (2.5 cm approx... in weight, 20g dough balls are big, 15 to 20g is fine) in diameter and place on baking sheet leaving a lot of space between them because they completely flatten out when cooked. Bake for 9 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Piparkökur

500g plain flour, 500g soft dark brown sugar, 250g soft butter or margarine, 2 eggs, 5 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 2 teaspoons of ginger, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ground cloves, half a teaspoon of pepper.

Mix everything together into a dough. It will feel grainy because of the sugar but that´s ok. If you can get caster sugar this would be better. Roll the dough into cylinder 3-4 cm in diameter and wrap in clingfilm. It needs to be in the fridge for at least a few hours so best to do this the day before. Slice the dough into 1 to 1.5cm slices. Bake for 9-11 minutes at 200 degrees C. We baked ours for 8.5 minutes and after that they got too dark underneath. Óli says this makes enough to fill a standard-sized Mum cookie box. This means little to me and Óli´s Mum is a busy and wonderful cook and has what appears to be an infinite number of cookie boxes of all sizes. Let´s say this makes plenty. Apparently though we are doubling the recipe next year.. 2 of everything.

Christmas tree hunt

Christmas puddings - serve flaming

Christmas baking rule number 1 .. never bake only one of anything. Two Christmas cakes, two Christmas puddings also. At least two batches of favourite Christmas cookies or smákökur.

Christmas baking rule number 2 .. always sample ingredients prior to inclusion in recipe .. dried fruit, glacé cherries, brandy, sherry..

Óli’s general Christmas rule .. set fire to as many things as possible.

On holiday in Scotland in November I found individual Christmas puddings for sale way before advent even. Along with mulled wine and mince pies. Maybe like hot cross buns they will become year-round delights. But does that remove the delight? Thankfully we arrived just a little too early for the Christmas shopping carols, otherwise our hunt for Christmas presents in 2 days would have been even more trying that it was. Living in Iceland it is hard to go to the world outside without feeling like a child in a sweetie shop when presented with a big range of shops, culinary delicacies and prices which don’t break the bank. Mmm.. cheese, black pudding, .. shoes. I read once, when working over Christmas in a book shop, that the incessant playing of Christmas carols in the high street has a measurable detrimental effect to the mental health of shop workers. I can well believe it and I think I am still struggling to recover. Well, Christmas pudding joined the list of Scottish hits and true to style we decided to make our own. We spent the summer squashing berries and stirring pots of gooey blood so Christmas puddings really had to be homemade. Anyway, the suitcases were too stuffed with secret Christmas presents, glacé cherries, cheeses, haggi and black puddings for any shop-bought Christmas food.

Step 1, gather rather ugly but practical plastic pudding basins from Lakeland plastics. No chance I am messing with string and fancy knots a la Delia after the black pudding scenario. Step 2, gather all fruit left over from Christmas cakes and brandy stored away from Óli. Dig out trusty “Mrs. Beeton’s Favourite Recipes” book. Very small, it always hides behind the fancy, shiny, glossy photographic coffee-table type cookbooks which I hardly use. However, once tracked down it is a cookbook to be treasured, with age-old standards such as roast beef and yorkshire puddings, eccles cakes and .. Christmas puddings. Mrs. Beeton’s recipes work for me, Jamie Oliver’s don’t.

Mrs. Beeton was pretty amazing .. her book on household management became Britain’s most famous cookbook and despite the wealth of glossy modern books on cooking and food probably remains so. Originally published as a collection of articles from the "The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine", "The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc. – also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort." was published as a complete volume in 1961. Phew, was anyone left out of that list? I suppose the etc. etc. covers them. Just imagine the acronym. Also called Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management or Mrs. Beeton’s Cookbook. It is now mostly available on-line where you can also read about the history of a Victorian household. Times for people in Britain really were different then. She died aged 28 after giving birth, like many others of her era.

This recipe makes 4 puddings, each in a 1 pint sized basin. What on earth do you do with 4 puddings? I think this dates back from the days of 16-person families. One spoonful of this Christmas pudding is enough to satisfy a craving for rich food for at least a week. So, it was Christmas, we halved the recipe and made two, following rule number 1 and ate about one sixth as a serving each, enough to make it almost impossible to move for a few hours. The rather disgusting, yet traditional, Christmas feeling.

Ingredients: 225g (8oz) plain flour, pinch (meaning a little, I have little hands so that’s very small) of salt, pinch (again) of coriander, teaspoon ground ginger, teaspoon cinnamon, teaspoon mixed spice (I think it is a UK thing ..includes ), teaspoon grated nutmeg, 50g (2oz) chopped almonds, 450g (1lb) soft brown sugar (dark makes a nicer colour), 275g (10oz) shredded suet (beef fat, from Scotland, do not use chopped Icelandic lamb fat.. yucky yuck yuck), 275g (10oz) precious sultanas, 275g (10oz) currants or chopped figs or dates if currants have suddenly become more precious than gold.. maybe everybody was making Christmas puddings, 225g (8oz) raisins, 225g (8oz) mixed peel, 200g stale white breadcrumbs, 6 eggs, 75ml stout (e.g. Guinness.. give remaining to Óli, make a friend for the day), 50ml brandy (or to taste.. I wonder what becomes too much), tablespoon of rum, juice of 1 orange, 150-300ml (1/4 to 1/2 pint) milk. Not entirely authentic .. we added the figs (Figgy Pudding), cinnamon and coriander (because it didn’t smell Christmassy enough and most Icelandic baking has some cinnamon) and the rum (to dilute the brandy!). Like with the Christmas cake do the cooking show thing of measuring out everything into cute little bowls before mixing together otherwise something is bound to get missed. I felt a little silly with my long list, ticking everything off .. just needed a clipboard and to push my glasses to the end of my nose. Find someone else to do the washing up.

Method: Mix all dry things together (flour, salt, spices – you can sieve these if you wish, I don’t think it matters – dried fruits, almonds, sugar, suet and breadcrumbs). Beat together eggs, stout, rum, brandy, orange juice and 150ml milk. This really isn’t a pretty combination. Gradually stir this into the dry ingredients until you get a soft dropping consistency, which means what I ask? .. it drops softly, note dropping not dripping, soft and will drop off the spoon I suppose, but having investigated this now to some degree that can mean almost anything.. I’d aim for something like slightly melted ice cream. Put the mixture into four (if using the whole recipe and feeding your entire neighbourhood or one Edinburgh tenement) plastic pudding basins and cover with the lids. Leave about a 1 cm space between the pudding mixture and the lid. We overfilled one and of course it popped and then became too dry inside. Put into deep boiling water in a very big pan (big enough to boil yer head; really I don’t boil heads, its just a turn of phrase .. and reminds me of student fieldtrips and accurate measurements of boulder sizes.. “It was as big as my head”, perfectly describing the boulder in question and giving a lovely impression of the degree of roundness and density also, see attached head in appendix for calibration of the scale). Boil steadily for 6 to 7 hours. Puddings not heads. You need to be at home for this to top up the water now and again and to stop your children and pets climbing into the pot. It will be a slightly darker colour when cooked and you will see some tasty sweet syrupy juices in it. Let it cool, wrap tightly in foil and place in the fridge. Keep for as long as 12 months or preferably at least 1 month before eating. We had one at Hogmanay since there was no space after the turkey at Christmas and another for our Burns supper around a month later. The Burns night one was definitely better.

Reheat before serving either in the microwave for a few minutes or by boiling again for 1 and half hours. Leave to stand for five minutes or so before serving. Serve flaming! Heat an eggcup full of brandy for a few seconds in a microwave or in a small pan. Pour over up-turned pudding and set alight. Do not place under paper lampshade over the table. Whoosh! Good with cream or ice cream. How can anyone really seriously consider sweet brandy sauce?

Christmas cakes

My first Christmas away from a UK family so lets do it right. What do we need? A real Christmas cake, a Christmas pudding, Christmas dinner, crackers, tinsel, Christmas cards.. First the baking.

As predicted after baking fruitcake, Christmas cake was a drama. But fun. I bought decorations when in Edinburgh in November and hoarded dried fruit, putting the sherry, sultanas and glacé cherries out of reach of even Óli. I needed a set of steps to reach them. Mum gave me her recipe and we got hold of one from Delia online. We made two cakes.. Mum´s real Christmas cake with lots of halved cherries and Delia´s rich traditional cake which of course can´t beat Mum´s one. But being part of the real cultural experience I was told we had to have the traditional as well as the Mum version. I am writing this in March and .. well.. all the Mum cake disappeared before New Year but we have still got a small wedge of the Delia one wrapped in foil in the cupboard. Mum, can I give away the recipe?





For once it really is worth doing the cooking show thing of measuring everything into little bowls and placing them in the order of appearance in front of you. Tick each one off on the list. Prevents 4 times the amount of sultanas (so no more fruit cakes until next foreign trip and no Christmas pudding) and also prevents subtle theft of cherries to the detriment of the cake. More cherries in the cake the better, less cherries directly into Óli the better. Follow the secret recipe (is it secret Mum?) and place in a round tin, 8" diameter. Put brown paper or baking parchment around it and make a paper lid to stop it burning. Cook for about 3 hours. Feed with sherry once per week at least. Then, cover with marzipan rolled to a sensible thickness, less than 1cm perhaps. Make royal icing and forget to include gelatine and create a snowscene on your cake. Make everything nice and spiky. Break teeth on hard icing but enjoy cake.