Sprengidagur

Fat Tuesday

After the sumptuous sweet donut meal on Shrove Monday, there's a really hearty meat meal for everyone on Shrove Tuesday - one more time to eat your fill before you have to fast until Easter...

Carnival Tuesday is called “ Sprengidagur ” in Icelandic, meaning “blow-up day” - basically it’s about “eating until it bursts”.

The oldest known written mention of Sprengidagur in Iceland can be found in a dictionary from 1735, where the “night of the great feast” is reported.

The Sprengidagur is also mentioned in a travel report from the middle of the 18th century: According to this, it was customary to have another big meal on the evening of Carnival Tuesday, at which everyone had to eat as much hangikjöt , i.e. smoked lamb, as they could - because after that, meat was no longer allowed to be eaten until Easter. And it would be a shame to let the good meat go to waste!

While in the past people apparently mainly ate smoked lamb, at the end of the 19th century at the latest people switched to salted meat, which had to be eaten before Lent.

Since then, the classic food for the Sprengidagur in Iceland has beensaltkjöt og baunir , i.e. pea soup with salted meat.

And after the big meal on Rose Monday ( bolludagur ) with the bolludagsbollur (= donuts with jam, cream and icing) and the salt meat with peas on Shrove Tuesday, Lent begins...

[Translated from here.]