Skyr

Skyr is a very special, typically Icelandic dairy product - it can be compared to a mixture of quark and thick yoghurt, at least it goes in that direction.

In the past, each farm made its own skyr - the milk was first boiled to kill the bacteria, then cooled down to to about 100 °F (38 °C) and then some finished skyr or usually rennet was added as a natural bacterial culture. Since Skyr is made from skimmed milk, it has a very low fat content of around 0.2-0.5%

In the past, people traditionally ate their Skyr with freshly picked blueberries, dressed with a little milk and sugar, but today Skyr can be bought in very different flavors (e.g. strawberries, bananas, fruit jelly, etc.) and there is also delicious drinking Skyr, so to speak a kind of “drinking yogurt”.

The main production facility is the Icelandic dairy headquarters in Selfoss. The MS Selfossi dairy, founded here in 1929, is the oldest and largest dairy in the country. By the way, Selfoss is located in a very earthquake-prone zone, even by Icelandic standards. The city was almost completely destroyed in the great earthquake of 1896, and the last two earthquakes in May 2008, with magnitudes of 6.1 and 6.3 on the Richter scale, again caused considerable damage; there were injuries, but fortunately no deaths .

The collapse of the old suspension bridge over the Ölfusá from 1890 was not due to the earthquakes, but rather due to the load of two milk wagons, which were too much for the old bridge.

PS: The eighth of the thirteen Icelandic Christmas companions, the Jolasveinar, is Skyrjármur (in English the “skyr glutton”). He comes to the farms on December 19th, steals people's Skyr from the barrels and returns on January 1st back to the mountains.

[Translated from here.]