. Favourite Beer of the Week in Iceland - Part One

Except for a couple of Irish monks, Iceland was uninhabited until 874 AD, when it was colonised by disgruntled Norwegians.  

The Norwegians passed it on to the Danes, who ran the country into the ground, and were notorious drunks.

Iceland finally gained independence from Denmark about a hundred years ago.  The Danes were still drunk, "Drinking eight times as much alcohol per person on a yearly basis," according to historian Stefan Palsson.  So the newly independent Icelanders also banned alcohol, and beer was illegal in Iceland until 1989.

These days Iceland makes lots of beer, and since we were visiting I thought I would drink some.  I had a free one on the plane, but it turned out to be this boring lager from the Egill brewery in Reykjavík.

Egill was founded in 1913, and they continued making beer throughout Prohibition by selling it to British and American soldiers.  The brewery is named after Egill Skallagrímsson, the Viking poet and "adventurer."

Skallagrímsson composed his first poem at the age of three.  At the age of seven, another boy cheated at the game they were playing, so Egill got an axe and chopped open the boys head.  He continued killing people and writing poems for the rest of his life. Just before he died he buried his treasure near Mosfellsbær, then murdered the servant who helped him bury it.

Mosfellsbær is where Sigur Rós have their music studio, Sundlaugin, which means "the swimming pool," because that is what the building used to be.  Other Icelandic musicians who have recorded at Sundlaugin include Amiina, Múm, and Ólöf Arnalds, all available on CD at the airport.

Iceland’s Keflavík Airport looks like it was bought at Ikea.  It is clean and well organised, and all the sinks have built-in hand dryers, which on arrival seemed like a beautiful design concept from the future, although I couldn't figure out how to dry my hands without blowing foamy soap all over myself.

The only place you can shop for booze in Iceland is at Vínbúðin, a chain of 46 state-run liquor stores that are open for a couple of hours a day if you're lucky.  The one exception to this rule is the airport, where alcohol is readily available, tax and duty free.  For this reason there are more people in Baggage Claim with crates of beer than with luggage.

I was too tired to think about beer, so we exchanged some dollars for krónas and headed out to our rental car (with exorbitant sand and volcano ash insurance).  We made it about ten steps into the parking lot before pulling out all our fleece and wool things, because Iceland is brisk.

Our Airbnb apartment was in the middle of the Skolavorduholt neighbourhood of Reykjavík, which is where all the groovy bars, and restaurants, and sweater shops are.

There is good coffee at C is for Cookie, who have a genuine Italian man making the espresso, and Mokka Kaffi, who have booths, and beans so secret the staff don't know where they come from.

There are two local, mostly-vegan restaurants - Garðurinn, where everything is delicious, and Glo, where everything is also delicious, except for the chicken.  But they make up for it by having great window seats where you can sit and make fun of the other tourists.

There is also some good vegan carrot cake one block away at Cafe Babaloú.  But don't order a beer there because it's that horrible lager stuff again.

Also, why would you order beer with cake?  What is wrong with you?

At the weekend, Reykjavík is a bit of a party town, so we hit the bars on Monday afternoon.  

We went down the road to Ölstofan, which is a trendy dive bar.  I wanted to try a local IPA, but they had apparently just run out of it on draft, so I got this bottle.

Úlfur Úlfur is a Double IPA from Borg Brugghús, which means "City Brewery," and it was great — piny and hoppy.  Borg Brugghús was launched in 2010 by Egill Brewery who make the boring lager I had on the plane.  Borg make small batches of more interesting beers, and they are beginning to export to other countries.

nif wanted a whiskey, but apparently there is only one Icelandic whiskey, and whenever you ask anyone about it they pull a face, so she had this Japanese one instead.  It was very good.

Then we got tired and hungry and went back to the apartment.

The next day we drove an hour northeast of Reykjavík, to Þingvellir, which means "Parliament Plains," and is where the Icelandic government was established in 930 AD.

Þingvellir lies in a rift valley, which I think is like a fault line, where tectonic plates move around and cause earthquakes.  It is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Iceland, but it wasn't too busy when we went, possibly because it was cold and raining.  

In the olden days, Þingvellir was the centre of Icelandic culture.  Parliament was here, along with large gatherings of ordinary people who came to trade goods, share stories, and drink beer.

These days it's a National Park.  We strolled through the rift valley along the designated tourist boardwalk, which eventually turned into a regular walk.

We observed the evident fracturing of the earth's crust as the path steepened and the walk turned into a bit of a hike.

It stopped raining for a while, so we went off-road through a small pine grove and across the hillside to the middle of the park where we ate our expertly prepared (by me) sandwiches.

And then it totally poured down, so we trudged back to the visitors centre, paid 200 kr each to pee, and drove home to Reykjavík for a drink.

Mikkeller is a Danish microbrewery that collaborates with other breweries around the world to make very small batches of very tasty beer.  They operate bars in several cities, including one in San Francisco that I still haven't visited, although I did once loiter in the doorway to eat a falafel.

Their bar in Iceland is called Mikkeller & Friends.  It is on the third floor of a nice old building that was designed and built by Dr. Goðmundur Hannesson in 1910, and was later the home of Reykjavík's first X-ray clinic. 

There are 20 beers on tap.  We tried a couple of the Imperial Stouts — Man in the Moon and Cocoa Shake. Man in The Moon was the favourite.  

The next morning we attempted to get breakfast at The Laundromat Cafe because we wanted to try their famous Vegan Toast — grilled rye bread piled with hummus, roasted eggplant, greens, pine nuts, topped with beet and caramelized onion chutney.  

But apparently they don't make that until lunchtime, so we had two plates of bread and fruit and some disappointing coffee.  They are dead to us.

We walked through the Hólagallagarður Cemetery in the rain.  Hólagallagarður means "garden on a hill."  You don't see many trees in Iceland, but the 8 acre cemetery is full of birch and rowan.  And there's an endangered species of moss growing on the walls.

Hólagallagarður was opened in 1838, and the first person buried there was Guðrun Oddsdóttir.  This made her the cemetery's "guardian," responsible for watching over those arriving after.

Jón Suggurðson arrived in 1879.  He had been the hero of the Icelandic Independence movement who led the country to break ties with Denmark, and he is on the 500 króner bank note.

Other Icelandic bank notes feature the poet Jónas Hallgrímsson, and the seamstress Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir, who was considered "One of the finest marriageable women of her time."

We never saw a 2000 króner note while we were there, but it portrays Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval, a modernist landscape painter, considered one of the most important artists in Iceland's history.  Part of the Reykjavik Art Museum is named after him - Kjarvalsstadir.

The other part of the museum is called Asmunarsafn, after sculpter Ásmundur Sveinsson.

We went there and looked at the sculpture, and talked to the nice man who ran the place.  He told us how the museum used to be Sveinsson's home and studio, and later he taught us an Icelandic phrase useful when describing blizzards — "Vindrassgrat," which means "Wind's Asshole."

The word "Sauðárkrókur" means "Sheep river hook."  Sauðárkrókur is the biggest town in Northwest Iceland with a population of about 2,500 people.  The first settler in Sauðárkrókur arrived in 1871.  He was a blacksmith called Árni Árnason, and as well as blacksmithing he opened a bar, earning him the nickname Árni Vert, or "Innkeeper Árni."

These days Sauðárkrókur is home to a small brewery called Gæðingur Brugghús.  Gæðingur also have a bar in Reykjavik called Micro Bar, where you can get all of their beers on tap, plus a whole load of other ones in bottles.  It is a serious beer geek bar, and when we went it was entirely full of British beer geeks, all nodding their heads to the Sufjan Stevens music and trying not to talk to each other.

I fit right in, and got myself a flight of five samplers — four Gæðingurs, and one from Ölvisholt, which is a small brewery in Selfoss, which is a not very exciting town 30 miles south of Reykjavik.

Gæðingur's Tumi Humall IPA was my favourite.  Their stout was nice, but a bit thin, and their Pale Ale was okay.  The Hveilti wheat beer was wheaty as expected.  The only one I didn't like was the one from Ölvisholt, which was a Saison called Sif.

Sif was a Norse Goddess.  She married Thor, and then Loki cut off her hair.  Thor threatened to beat the crap out of Loki, so Loki got Sif some magical replacement hair that grew out of gold.  The golden hair also helped the crops grow, and wheat is a crop, and beer is made of wheat, which is presumably why she is on the label for this beer I didn't like.  

I left most of it, because I was full of beer.  Also, the couple from Newcastle at the table next to us were loud and moany, and nif had finished her whiskey ages ago, and we had two episodes of Jonathan Strange to watch back at the house.

to be continued...