Islendipics2

The Viking Platter of my imagination was an appetizer of three tiers, not unlike the giant boat-shaped Sashimi tray, from which I’d sampled my first cuts of raw fish in college. The platter’s price, nearing $30, supported the height of my expectations.
The Viking Platter our Viking waiter set down on the table consisted of three tiny squares of white meat, cubed like cheese, on a plate the size of an ashtray. The only creative thing about the presentation of the Viking Platter were the Icelandic flag toothpicks, as though signaling what to taste first: harkarl.
“Wait,” Paul asked, pulling out his camera-phone. It’s never a good sign, when you’re about to sample a foreign food, and your company readies to document the moment.
Shark, to start, has that worrisome wet density of cheap lunchmeat. But unlike damp ham, shark is tough like a piece of old bazooka gum. It tastes first like the dirt it was cured in, next like the putrid sea beast that it is.

“...June’s brilliant light had troubled my personal relationship with Mother Nature. I dreaded the freakish evening hours like a little kid afraid of the dark – except I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I was afraid of light. Iceland’s light. Unable to wind down and sleep, I asked my interviewees for tips.

“How do I fall asleep?” Stasia, an 88-year-old American, repeated my question back, as though I’d asked how to yawn or chew. She’d moved from Pennsylvania to Iceland on a freighter ship in 1946...”

Phone book: listed by first names.

Recommended reading: the phone book. Particularly if you are looking, say, for Americans living in Iceland. Amid the long columns of Injibjorgs, Frank leaps right out.

Frank: a 96-year-old American living in Iceland. Though when he boarded his military ship in 1941, Frank was told only the code name of his destination: "Blue Indigo."

Blue Indigo: a color I could more easily fall sleep under...”

ESSAYS & ARTICLES ABOUT ICELAND