Milli jóla og nýárs

Between Christmas and New Year

We're currently taking it easy between the years. Sometimes the weather isn't that great, so I think you can stay at home with a clear conscience.

On Sunday we had really fantastic weather! Bright blue sky, sunshine, not much wind, but rather cool at 14 °F (-10 °C) ...

The husband and child took advantage of the good weather and went for a bit of hiking in the area.

My husband took this picture of the sun on the way, at 12:06 p.m. Well - in summer there is (almost) midnight sun here, but now in winter there is at least midday sun, just above the horizon!

In the meantime I did a bit of housework and knitting. And after lunch we all went back to our hot tub for a swim. The photo was taken at half past one. It's wonderful to climb into 104 °F (40 °C) hot water when the outside temperature is 14 °F (-10 °C)!

I also wish you a few nice, cozy days, if possible...

[Translated from here.]

Túnfisksalat með skyri

Tuna salad with skyr

If you're looking for a delicious dip for New Year's Eve or another nice occasion, I could also recommend this one - that is, if you like fish.

In any case, the fish thing is a bit of a critical point for my family - the majority of people are fine with grilled salmon, but beyond that it becomes difficult...

No matter - I think this tuna salad with crackers is delicious! For the part of the family that doesn't like fish, there's the cheese and bacon dip that we had at Christmas. At least I can always use it for my youngest!

Ingredients

180 g canned tuna (drained weight)

180g pure skyr

80 g sour cream

4 hard-boiled eggs

1/2 red onion

1 red pepper

1 tsp mustard

coarse sea salt

ground black pepper

Preparation

Peel and dice the hard-boiled eggs.

Peel half the red onion and cut it into small pieces.

Wash and clean the red pepper and cut it into thin strips, then cut the strips into small pieces.

Place the skyr and sour cream in a large bowl.

Add all remaining ingredients...

... and mix the whole thing thoroughly. Season with a little salt and/or pepper to taste.

Serve the tuna salad with crackers or similar as a dip.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Jólamaturinn okkar

Our Christmas dinner 2024

For Christmas, my children had expressly asked for a traditionally roasted bird (goose, or alternatively duck) with red cabbage, dumplings, potatoes and sauce, just like before. With warm red cabbage - not cold, as is more common in Iceland. So classic German food.

There were no special requests for starters and desserts, so I had free rein.

So I prepared two different dips for the first hunger, along with crackers and small pretzels:

A large portion of my still current favorite Icelandic dip with cheese and bacon ...

... and a smaller portion of salmon spread with egg (Savulohilevite), a Finnish salmon dip based on a recipe by Michaela from her blog Mahtava .

The cheese and bacon dip in particular went down wonderfully, especially my youngest offspring could have just spooned this dip away. My daughter and I really appreciated the salmon dip... definitely both very tasty, easy to prepare and quite filling for the hungry family.

For dessert, I made Finnish snowflake tarts (Lumihiutaletorttu) or Christmas tarts (Joulutorttu), also based on a recipe from Mahtava - simply fill ready-made puff pastry with jam, fold it, bake it and then dust it with powdered sugar. So beautifully uncomplicated!

The recipe actually calls for a pack of ready-made puff pastry and plum jam or other jam. I made 1.5 packs, just to be on the safe side, so that everyone would definitely be full, and filled them with plum jam, strawberry jam and nut nougat cream. The recipe is wonderfully simple, and although it takes a bit of time to form all the snowflakes, it's actually not difficult. And it tastes really good and looks great too!

The nut nougat cream stars in particular were a hit with the youngest members of the family.

We all really enjoyed our Christmas dinner with the entire family and everyone had at least something to fill up on. Nothing complicated, just easy to prepare, but still something different and visually appetizing. What more do I want..?!?

Merry Christmas!

[Translated from here.]

Piparkökukaka

Gingerbread cake

For the Christmas breakfast last week with my colleagues I baked a gingerbread cake - for a Christmas touch. Simply mix the spices that I would otherwise put into the gingerbread dough into the cake dough, it smells wonderful and thanks to the baking powder and baking soda it also becomes wonderfully fluffy.

And since there are no nuts in the dough, colleagues who have a nut allergy and can never eat gingerbread were also able to eat, because there are nuts in everything.

Actually, a cream cheese glaze was supposed to be used, but since I had to transport the cake in the car and couldn't keep it cool all the time, I preferred to make a simple powdered sugar glaze, which also goes very well with gingerbread!

Ingredients for the dough

350 g flour

350 g brown sugar

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground vanilla

2 tsp ground orange peel

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

200 g butter

3 eggs

3 Tbsp orange juice

200 ml milk

2 Tbsp rock candy

Ingredients for the glaze

300 g powdered sugar

1 pinch of salt

1 pinch of ground vanilla

approx. 40 ml lukewarm water

optionally, gingerbread for decoration

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C) upper/lower heat.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

Then add the butter and knead into crumbles.

Add the eggs in portions and mix.

Then add the orange juice and whole milk and mix everything at low speed to form a smooth dough.

Finally, stir 3 tablespoons of rock sugar into the dough, which adds a certain “crunch” to the finished baked dough.

Then divide the dough into three small molds (approx. 20 cm in diameter)...

...and bake at 180° top and bottom heat for approx. 25 - 30 minutes (test with a chopstick!)

Allow the cake layers to cool in the tin.

For the cream, mix the powdered sugar with the salt and the ground vanilla, then add the warm water and mix everything thoroughly until a thick mixture is formed.

Carefully remove the first layer from the mold, place it on a suitable cake plate and spread it with a little cream.

Then place the second layer on top, spread it again with a little cream and finally place the third layer on top. Spread with the remaining cream and decorate to taste, e.g. with gingerbread cookies, small icing gingerbread men, etc

Allow the icing to set and then serve the cake. I think the cake tastes even better the second day if it's well cooked!

PS:

For the alternative cream cheese icing, take 400 g cream cheese, 250 g mascarpone, 200 g powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons of orange juice, mix everything together and then cover the cake with it in layers. I'm sure it tastes really good too, I'll try it next time!

[Translated from here.]

Rjúpa og sósa

Ptarmigan and sauce

A classic Icelandic Christmas food is ptarmigan (rjúpa). However, the animal population in Iceland is declining drastically, which is why ptarmigan hunting has been increasingly restricted, for example hunting is only allowed on certain days of the year and the number of animals per hunter is also limited. Hunting is only permitted for personal use; selling is prohibited.

However, you can now find ptarmigan from Great Britain frozen in Icelandic supermarkets - either breasts or whole birds. On average, a bird weighs just around 400 g.

Classic side dishes for the ptarmigan here with the sauce are potatoes, peas and cold red cabbage, but fresh salad, for example, also tastes good with it.

Ingredients for 4 servings

Ptarmigan breast (2 pieces per person)

1 tbsp butter

salt and pepper

1 small onion

500 ml cooking cream

100 ml vegetable broth

1/2 mushroom cheese / pepper cheese

2 Tbsp blue cheese

2 Tbsp blackcurrant jelly / rhubarb jam

salt and pepper


Preparation

Season the ptarmigan breasts with salt and pepper...

...and fry in melted butter in a pan for about 1 minute on each side.

Then put it in a fireproof dish, set it aside and then put it in a preheated oven (350 °F resp. 180 °C upper/lower heat) for 8 to 10 minutes just before serving.

To make the sauce, first chop the onion and let it become translucent in the butter in which the ptarmigan breasts were fried.

Add the cream, the vegetable stock and the finely chopped pepper cheese and let the sauce simmer slowly, stirring regularly.

Finally, chop up the blue cheese and add it.

Season the sauce with the jelly or jam and salt and pepper.

Then leave the sauce on the stove at a low temperature for a moment while you serve the rest of the food, and then serve.

[Translated from here.]

Jólastemmning

Christmas spirit

In Icelandic there is the expression "Ég er mikið jólabarn! " - "I am a total Christmas child!"

This shows that you are still looking forward to Christmas like a child, to the Advent season, all the beautiful lights, the Christmas decorations, the good food, just the time of year when it is dark outside and the smells of Christmas come through All rooms can be moved and you can make yourself really comfortable at home with your loved ones. Doesn't that sound beautiful...?!?

Normally I'm always the "total Christmas child". Only this year - I think I'm broken. Somehow I don't feel like Christmas at all... I have to do something.

I once started distributing Christmas decorations in our Iceland house. When I turn on the electric candles in the wooden stand above the stove and look outside and there's some snow, it feels a bit like Christmas, doesn't it?

Then I just have to remember to take the candle holder down and put it somewhere else before we fire up the oven...

I also freed the glowing Christmas gnome from his drawer and gave him a new battery. Now he can spread his cozy light again, from sunset (currently around 3:30 p.m. for us) to sunrise (currently around 11:15 a.m.).

And I also hung the Christmas curtain on the kitchen window, red checked and with big snowflakes and little Christmas elves. Plus a Christmas tea that smells wonderfully of cinnamon...

In the hallway I wrapped a red, glittering garland around the frame of the mirror...

...and our Christmas tree is up and ready for use. My husband made the tree himself, a "tree" made of wooden blocks with green-painted "branches" and a beautiful, colorful string of lights. By the way, with this tree we are following the Icelandic tradition of homemade, green-painted Christmas trees.

I'm also on vacation now and today I finally baked my first Christmas cookies. Maybe now I'll finally get in the mood when things get a little quieter here...

[Translated from here.]

Jólatré á Íslandi

Christmas trees in Iceland

Have you ever thought about how long the tradition of putting up decorated Christmas trees has existed in Iceland?

Christmas trees actually haven't been around that long - there are first reports from the beginning of the 16th century that talk about Christmas trees being put up at Christmas time.

Christmas trees became somewhat widespread in Germany in the second half of the 16th century, after the Reformation, when the first Protestants found it inappropriate to set up a nativity scene following Catholic custom. Over time, candles were attached to the branches of the Christmas trees and decorated with apples, nuts and icing.

The custom of putting up evergreen fir trees at Christmas only spread in Europe from the second half of the 18th century. The first Christmas trees came to the Nordic countries in the 19th century.

The first Christmas trees appeared in Iceland in the mid-19th century - mainly among wealthy Danish merchants and officials who knew this custom from their time in Denmark.

Since no wild spruce trees grew in Iceland, the first Christmas trees in Iceland were homemade , made of poles and sticks and sometimes painted green or red. They were often decorated with candles that were attached to the "tree" with wax, or the trees were decorated with heather, for example.

The oldest of these Christmas trees still standing in Iceland dates back to 1873.

At that time, the newly married Danish woman Kamilla Briem spent her first Christmas in Iceland in the Hruni rectory in Hrunamannahreppur, near Flúðir, and Jón Jónsson , the farmer from the Þverspyrna farm about 2 km away, built a Christmas tree for the young pastor's wife. Kamilla's daughter Elín Steindórsdóttir (1881 - 1965) later inherited the Christmas tree. She lived in Oddgeirshólar, a farm about 10 km east of Selfoss. Elín donated the tree to the Árnessýsla District Local History Museum in 1955 . Today the Christmas tree is usually displayed in the museum in Eyrarbakki.

Source: mbl.is / Kristín Heiða

Here in the photo from an article from Morgunblaðið from December 15th, 2024 about a Christmas exhibition from the National Museum in Reykjavík you can see the original Christmas tree from 1873 on the left and a replica on the right, decorated with heather and colorful candles on the ends of the poles, like the tree before Probably looked like 150 years ago.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Hruni Church, the tree was put up and decorated at the Christmas service in Hrunakirkja. This photo, which I found on the Byggðasafn Árnesinga homepage from 2015, shows Ólöf Elísabet Árnadóttir (1920 - 2017), the granddaughter of Kamilla Briem, with the tree at the Christmas mass in the church.

Source: byggdasafn.is

Around the middle of the 20th century, families in Iceland had their first real Christmas trees. In the beginning it was expensive, imported spruce that many people couldn't afford. Around 1970, the first Icelandic spruces came onto the market as Christmas trees.

Today, most Icelanders probably prefer to have a real Christmas tree in their house, which they then decorate, often colorfully and with homemade ornaments that they accumulate over the years. But it's also not uncommon to get an artificial Christmas tree - probably an obvious decision, especially in a tree-poor country like Iceland, especially since you can then put the tree up again every year.

Artificial Christmas trees in the garden center in Selfoss

But for reasons of sustainability, among other things, homemade Christmas trees are becoming more popular again.

In a way, we are right on trend with our beautiful wooden tree that my husband gave me last year!

Oslóartré - The Oslo Tree

One of the most famous Christmas trees in Iceland is the so-called Oslo tree.

Every year since 1951 , the Norwegian capital Oslo has given the Icelandic capital Reykjavík a large Christmas tree as a sign of the strong friendship and solidarity between the two nations. The tree is placed on the Austurvöllur and lit for the first time by the mayor in a solemn ceremony on the 1st of Advent.

For many years the tree came from Norway and was brought to Iceland by ship, until at the beginning of 2014 Oslo decided to stop giving away Christmas trees for various reasons - but this decision was not particularly well received by the people of Reykjavík.

Eventually it was mutually decided to continue the tradition. The Oslo tree now comes from Heiðmörk, a Norwegian tree plantation near Reykjavík. Tall, beautiful Christmas trees now grow here too, and the transport of the 10 to 12 meter high tree from Norway is saved, also for climate protection reasons.

Definitely a very beautiful, large Christmas tree with a special story!

[Translated from here.]