Iceland Local Customs

 
by Regina1965
 
  •   Local Customs
    by Regina1965
  •   Local Customs
    by Regina1965
  • A cat by the ocean in 107 Reykjavík
      A cat by the ocean in 107 Reykjavík
    by Regina1965
  • It was very friendly, jumping up on me and meowing
      It was very friendly, jumping up on me...
    by Regina1965
  • Cod liver oil in pills.
      Cod liver oil in pills.
    by Regina1965
 

Most Viewed Local Customs in Iceland

1.

Icelandic food   Reykjavík Region

Icelandic food, Reykjavík Region

 6 Reviews  Don't be fooled, the only time someone eats sheepheads and shark are at the "Thorrablot", annual festivals in january/february to celebrate the month of Thorri (according to the old calendar). Then... 

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2.

Language   Reykjavík Region

Language, Reykjavík Region

 6 Reviews  Icelandic is considered difficult and archaic - the least developped of the modern Germanic languages (to which, among others, belong the Scandinavian languages, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian and... 

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3.

Festivals/ Holidays   Reykjavík Region

Festivals/ Holidays, Reykjavík Region

 4 Reviews  Reykjavík is probably not the first place people think about when looking for special places to ring in the New Year, but other major cities have nothing on the small capital of Iceland. Around 8:30... 

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4.

Icelandic horse   Reykjavík Region

Icelandic horse, Reykjavík Region

 2 Reviews  The ICELANDIC HORSE - A completely pure breed. Horses from other countries may not enter Iceland, nor may horses return once they leave the country. Horses are seen everywhere including the city and... 

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5.

Fishing   Reykjavík Region

Fishing, Reykjavík Region

 2 Reviews  Fishing is Iceland's most important industry. There economy depends heavily on fishing yet only a small percentage of the population actually work in the fishing industry. Nonetheless, almost every... 

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A few facts about Iceland and the Icelandic nation

by Regina1965

Our main export is not fish but aluminium. Iceland is in the 17th place of the largest fishing nation, catching 2% of all the fish caught in the world. 39% of our export earnings come from fish.6,8% of the population in Iceland were foreign citizens (January 1st, 2010).Most foreign citizens travelling through our international airport are British citizens.95% of all 16 year olds are in college.Two out of three graduates from University are women.79% of all our electric power usage goes to the heavy industry.7 Icelandic movies premiered in 2008.91% of the nation uses the Internet daily.5% of the Icelandic nation support UNICEF, which is the highest percent of supporters per capita in the world.Icelanders are the 4th fattest nation in Europe (some of us).0,01% of the nation is deaf - ca 300 people.8,2% of the nation are immigrants (2010) or 26.171, most of them Polish immigrants (10.058)....

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Iceland is the best place in the world for a woman

by Regina1965

According to a research Newsweek made Iceland is the best place in the world for a woman to live in. We got 100 out of 100 for justice.90,5 for health.96,7 for education.88 for economics.92.8 for politics.Our Prime minister is a woman and we had the first woman president in the world, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir who was our president from 1980-1996.But even if women have it good in Iceland there still is the difference in salaries... when is that going to change, and honestlly what is that about!!??

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SKYR - a fat-free dairy product.

by Regina1965

Skyr is a dairy product which used to be unique to Iceland and very popular here. The Vikings settlers brought the knowledge of skyr-making with them when they came over from Norway in ca 874. Skyr is really thick, made from pasteurized skim-milk which is cultured and concentrated. It contains no fat, but a high percentage of protein. It comes with all kinds of different flavours now, see my photos. When I was younger we bought a very thick chunk of skyr, unblended, and added sugar and water or milk to it and mixed it. It was traditionally eaten with milk or cream and sugar on top and it was/is a stable in the Icelandic diet. Sometimes skyr is called the Icelandic cheese ;)There are always new and new skyr products coming on the market, the latest idea being sea-weed/blueberry/honey skyr :) which we are waiting for (Nov. 2011). It is made with 100% Icelandic ingredients.And now there are...

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Rye-bread baked in hot springs in Iceland.

by Regina1965

It is an old tradition to use hot springs here in Iceland to steam/cook rye-bread. The photos I include are from bread-baking in the hot springs by Geysir.The recipe for the rye-bread is 2 kilos rye, 300 gr sugar, 2 table-spoons salt, 5 tea-spoons dry yeast and 1,75 liters water. Knead the dow and put into an empty milk-carton. Let it set for an hour. Put the cartons into the hot spring and let it bake for 24 hours. Be careful as the hot springs are like really hot and use oven mittens ;) The hot spring is then covered with a piece of wood.Nowadays the rye-bread is baked in the oven for 24 hours as not all of us have got our own private hot springs. But those who live in the country side and have access to hot springs use them for cooking and the taste of the rye-bread baked in hot springs is stronger than of the one baked in a normal oven.At the restaurant by Geysir the bread is served...

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Pure Icelandic water.

by Regina1965

Although our hot water is geothermal water and has a distinctive smell, our cold water is very pure. You can drink our cold water from the tap and we have big reserves of pure cold water. Iceland has got the biggest water reserves in the world.So you really don't have to buy bottled water here, if you have bought a bottle at the airport f.ex., just refill it with water from the tap. Sodastream is big here in Reykjavík, you just fill your bottle with pure water from the tap and "sodastream" it and get your own homemade fizzy water :) I use that a lot.But despite the clean water we have in abundance, we Icelanders drink a LOT of soda pop here, gigantic amounts of soda pop really. I guess we do not always appreciate what is right in front of us.

Many more custom tips.

by Regina1965

I have only added a few Icelandic custom tips here on my Iceland pages. But I have added many, many custom tips on my Reykjavík pages f.ex.: How to get to know Icelanders, Icelanders and foreigners, The Icelandic language, Icelandic food and drink, drinking habits, homosexuality in Iceland, Icelandic surnames, the belief in elves and trolls and the old Nordic gods, gender equality, different festivals, Christmas traditions, big trucks and many more, ca 35 custom tips all in all. So please look up these pages if you want to know more about Icelandic customs.Seeing that my Reykjavík page is getting very big I transferred a lot of Icelandic tips from there to this page.

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Cod liver oil - a good source of Vitamin D.

by Regina1965

Seeing that Iceland is so far north and that the winters are dark - and not too much sunshine during the summer time - we need to take cod liver oil to get our Vitamin D. When I was little cod liver oil was given to us in school, everybody had to stand in a row and wait their turn for their daily dosis of Vitamin D. Nowadays Icelanders eat less fish than before, I would say as it has become very expensive...We export cod liver oil and strangely enough a lot of cod liver oil pills were found in 2 cars going to Lithuania with loot from Iceland. The factory Lýsi exports cod liver oil to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Denmark to name a few.And it is known here that the Chinese and Japanese tourists buy up the stock of cod liver oil during their visit here in Iceland.I would recommend everybody moving here to start taking cod liver oil, or eat a lot of fatty fish - I don´t think that...

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The old children toys.

by Regina1965

The old Icelandic toys for kids are in Icelandic called "leggur og skel" animal bones and shells. These included also stones, sticks and horns. I include a photo of a poem in Icelandic about how these things were turned into horses, dogs etc. Bones were used for horses, jaw-bones were used for cows and guns, conches were used for dogs etc.I saw these toys outside of Nonni´s house/museum in Akureyri.Compare these simple toys to the toys today...

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Whaling in Iceland.

by Regina1965

There is a lot of controversy on whaling in the world. And some misinformation. Icelanders hunt some types of whales, f.ex. the small mink whales. We have a quota for hunting 145 finbacks out of 20.000 around Iceland, but haven´t used that quota. Finbacks are now on the watch list of IUCN, as there was massive overfishing of finbacks around the South-pole in the last century. Iceland is close to the North-pole and these finbacks are only of the same under-species and don´t travel from the South-pole to the North-pole. But still we get a lot of grieve because of this.Finbacks are increasing in number around Iceland and humpbacks around Iceland have increased in number ca 10-15% a year! Mink-whales have decreased in number though. Not because of whaling though as our quota is only 216 mink-whales yearly, but we never even hunt so many whales. And the number of mink-whales has decreased...

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Take off your shoes

by Krumel

In all the guesthouses and hostels that we stayed in you were expected to take off your shoes at the door to help keep the house clean, and everyone is walking around on socks or flipflops. This was a bit strange at first and can be a bit inconvenient if you have just laced up your hiking boots only to realise that you have forgotten something in your room, but you quickly get used to it and it is nice not to have muddy bootprints all over the place.

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Local traditions and culture in Iceland

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Local Customs: Cities in Iceland
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  2. Þingvellir Local Customs
  3. Höfn Local Customs
  4. Vík í Mýrdal Local Customs
  5. Mÿvatn Local Customs
  6. Grindavík Local Customs
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Q:  Hello (again), As prices for 4x4 cars are so much higher than regular cars, before I make a decision I would appreciate your... 

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