We never expected Iceland to be a food highlight for us. We had heard that food (and everything else for that matter) was extremely expensive, and had come expecting to eat canned vegetables, processed foods and not much else. I am extremely happy to say that our expectations were nothing like the reality, and we’ve come across some really interesting food finds that we are likely to miss for the rest of our journey.

Fish, fish and more fish

Being an island nation, it’s not surprising that Icelanders eat a lot of fish. You can find it in every supermarket, and in every form that you can imagine – fresh, frozen, smoked, dried, pickled, tinned… you name it, Icelanders have done it. The most interesting for us was the dried fish. It’s in every supermarket and many petrol stations, and is effectively the same as beef jerky – only fishier.

Juicy lamb

There are more sheep than people in Iceland, so lamb is cheap and readily available. The surprise for us was how tender it was. We tried a few different types, ranging in price from AUD 10 per kilo to AUD 20, cooked them up on our camp stove in a bunch of different ways, and all of them melted in your mouth. Mmmm…. lamb.

Skyr

If you read any article or guide about food in Iceland, they will no doubt mention Skyr (Icelandic yoghurt). Just as the guides predicted, we fell in love with this creamy delight. It’s hard to describe, kind of a cross between greek yoghurt, the normal fruit yoghurt you find in most supermarkets back home, and thick cream. It’s thick, not too sweet, and ever so delicious. We found ourselves buying a tub every time we went into a store (each tub comes with its own spoon and is only about AUD 1.70).

Cream cheese spread

Each supermarket, no matter how small, will stock at least a few flavours of cream cheese spread. This would not normally be the type of thing that would make it into any of my top foods, but we fell in love with the wild mushroom spread – particularly when put on rye crackers with sardines. It is lighter than the cheese spread you get back home, and made an awesome substitute for avocado.

Liquorice

Liquorice is everywhere in Iceland. There is plain liquorice, salted liquorice, chocolate coated liquorice, candy coated liquorice, liquorice coated chocolate… need I go on? Turns out liquorice not only tastes good, but also makes the most awesome top box snack to keep your energy levels up as you cycle along, so we happily worked our way through all the different types. The only disappointment has been the lack of liquorice ice-cream – we fell in love with this in New Zealand and have been hunting for it ever since.