After a breakfast in our room (scones and coffeemaker coffee) we crossed Austurvollur Square to the Settlement Museum, a branch of the Reykjavik City Museum. The museum occupies the basement of a building (a hotel, I think) and consists of the in-situ archaeological site of a Viking longhouse from the first settlement of the Reykjavik region.
It's fascinating to see. They can date it pretty precisely by the volcanic ash that settled in the walls as they were being built. In the intervening thousand years the street level has risen about 5 meters — but I was intrigued to see that the house is basically aligned with the modern street above.
The house itself looked almost exactly like the buildings Sir William described in Iceland a millennium later in 1809:
". . . the walls of these are extremely thick, especially at the base, formed of layers of stone and turf, not standing perpendicularly, but leaning a little inwards, and about seven or eight feet high; a sloping roof of turf, laid on birch boughs, makes the whole height of the buildings, which even thus does not reach above twelve or fourteen feet . . . both walls and floors are but seldom boarded: the sides are usually nothing but the black stone and turf, and the bottom only the bare ground. Generally, there are small openings, either in the walls or roof, by way of windows . . . A chimney, or rather an aperture for the emission of the smoke, usually made with a tub, is seen only in the best houses, in others the smoke is left to find its way out at the door, by which, also, the only air that they can possibly receive is admitted."
After that we walked eastward, up hill, to what can only be called the tourist neighborhood: full of souvenir shops, bars, the Punk Museum, and other operations designed to separate foreigners from money. One of them was a great shop selling handmade woollens, where Diane bought a lovely sweater so warm that it is almost impossible to wear indoors.
At the top of the hill is the Hallgrimskirk, the biggest church in Iceland. It's a nifty Gothic-Deco building that looms over the city and has become a national icon. Amusingly, one could fit the entire Cathedral building next door to our hotel, steeple and all, inside the nave of the Hallgrimskirk with plenty of spare room.
The best comparison I can make is to a very different building: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. Both are superb modernist churches which still call back to their religious heritage. Sagrada Familia is ornate and highly decorated, drawing on the many Gothic and Baroque churches of Spain. Hallgrimskirk is very plain and severe, from the austere tradition of Lutheran churches in Scandinavia.
And, yes, we visited the Icelandic Phallological Museum. The Penis Museum. Of course we did. What can one say about it? A reasonable collection of anatomical specimens — about what one would expect from a college biology department. A collection of snickering artworks and historical exhibits which I found rather scanty. No Roman penis amulets, no Japanese penis sculptures, no ithyphallic Egyptian statues of Osiris.
I have a strong suspicion that 90 percent of the people who visit the Phallological Museum simply take selfies in front of the entrance and don't bother paying to go in.
My science advisor did have a chat with the manager about some deficiencies in the collection — all their baculae (penis bones) were displayed upside down, with the smooth back end up and the tip with lots of fiddly bits at the bottom. Those fiddly bits are sometimes the only way to distinguish closely-related mammal species, but they look more phallic with the back end up.
We did not have penis-shaped waffles at the snack bar.
With the best of good will toward the people running the Museum, my summation is that unless you want to post some selfies of yourself grinning like a fool in front of a whale penis in a jar, give it a miss.
Then back to our hotel for a quick clean-up, and then off to Dill, Reykjavik's Michelin-starred restaurant featuring foods inspired by traditional Icelandic ingredients.
The thing about super-pricey hoity-toity restaurants like Dill is that . . . they're really good. One can chuckle at the relentless use of the word "sustainable" on the Web site of a joint that charges $150 a seat. One can raise an eyebrow at terms like "codfish foam" on the menu — but when some very talented people devote hours to the project of making a really good meal, that's what you're likely to get.
The menu for the evening was as follows:
First, a series of little amuse-bouches including smoked trout (cooked on a traditional Icelandic sheep-dung fire), a tiny bowl of super-concentrated vegetable broth, little cakes of dried wolffish, and an onion cake dotted with sweet carrot slices. We had champagne with that — from France but with a notable "mineral" flavor suited to Iceland.
Then a vegetable course of greens, fermented cabbage, a barley risotto, salt-baked beets, sol, and mushrooms. What's sol? A kind of seaweed, known as dulse in the British Isles. "In Iceland, also, it is very commonly eaten, but seldom in a fresh state," according to Sir William.
Next came the fish course, of cod foam with lumpfish roe on rye bread; and cod with mushrooms, seaweed, and birch. We were drinking white wine by this point, another French label which I carelessly didn't write down. The pairings were perfect, though.
And then the meat: some braised lamb (cooked for ten hours!) accompanied by a rutabaga puree. Also a slice of grilled lamb loin with black garlic and a dousing of consomme. These were paired with a red wine, and again I'm sorry I didn't note the labels because it was excellent (the restaurant Web site is very secretive about what wines they serve).
We finished that wine with a vegetable course of rutabaga with wasabi, and a kind of potato puree with berries.
Dessert was a roll cake, chocolate with pickled rhubarb, and a lemon thyme vinegar caramel. I had coffee with that course.
How obsessive are the chefs? I asked our waiter at one point: does the chef pick out appropriate dishware for each menu item? Or are the items inspired in part by the dishware? Oh, no. That wouldn't be obsessive enough. The chef works with local potters to create the right serving dishes for each food. That's attention to detail.
We paid up and walked (a bit unsteadily) back to our hotel. After sharing two bottles of wine and some champagne, my science advisor says she doesn't remember anything after leaving the restaurant until waking up the next morning. I can report that she didn't insult anyone along the way.
Next time: whales!
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