Christmas in Iceland starts at 6 p.m. on 24 December, when church bells ring across Reykjavík and families sit down to the main meal of the holiday.
What's on the table depends on the family. Smoked lamb, glazed pork and ptarmigan are the classics, with leaf bread on the side and malt and orange soda in the glass.
The Christmas Eve main course
Hangikjöt is smoked lamb, served hot or cold, and it is the most common Christmas dish. It is smoked over birch or dung fires, which gives it a strong, salty flavour, and it comes with uppstúf (a white sauce), peas and red cabbage, often with laufabrauð.
The name means "hung meat". At home the cooking is simple: the smoked joint is boiled and sliced, and most of the effort goes into the sauce and the sides.
Hamborgarhryggur, literally "Hamburg ridge", is a glazed pork roast, traditionally served with caramelised potatoes, pickled red cabbage and canned peas.
Rjúpa, the ptarmigan, is a game bird and, according to Guide to Iceland, the most popular game meat, though hunters may take only a certain number each year.
Outside Iceland, the pork roast is the easiest of the three to reproduce, since ptarmigan is a hunted game bird and hangikjöt needs a smoked joint.
Laufabrauð
Laufabrauð, or leaf bread, is a thin, crisp round of dough cut with intricate patterns, fried and served with butter. Cutting the patterns is a Christmas tradition in itself.
Christmas baking and sweets
Sörur, sometimes called Sara cookies, are a cream-filled almond macaroon dipped in chocolate, and a fixture of Icelandic Christmas baking.
Vínarterta, the layered cake with a spiced prune filling, needs several days to age, so it is a cake to start early.
What to drink
Jólaöl, the Christmas ale, is the traditional non-alcoholic drink: malt ale mixed with Appelsín, an orange soda.
You can approximate it at home with a non-alcoholic malt drink and orange soda. Start with equal parts and adjust to taste.
Þorláksmessa: the day before
On 23 December, Þorláksmessa, people traditionally eat fermented skate (skata), a strongly flavoured dish that divides opinion.
Beyond the table
The food is only part of an Icelandic Christmas. On the thirteen nights before Christmas the Yule Lads come down from the mountains one at a time, and children leave a shoe on the windowsill for a small gift, or a raw potato if they've been badly behaved.
There is also the Yule Cat, said to devour anyone who didn't get new clothes for Christmas. This piece on Icelandic folklore at nrf.is explains who's who.
Books are traditional gifts too, and publishers time new releases for the pre-Christmas "book flood", the jólabókaflóð.
A Christmas Eve plan for a home cook
A workable order of play: bake the vínarterta first, since it needs days to age. On the day, boil the hangikjöt, make the uppstúf, heat the peas and red cabbage, and serve with laufabrauð and butter. Pour jólaöl for everyone.
Hangikjöt is served hot or cold, so leftovers make the next day's lunch, sliced onto rye bread or flatbread.
Cooking Icelandic Christmas food at home
Start with hangikjöt with uppstúf and laufabrauð, then add rúgbrauð or flatbrauð to serve alongside. The guide to traditional Icelandic food lists the rest.
Icelandic Christmas cooking leans on smoke, salt and butter, which suits a month with very little daylight. Pick one dish, get it right, and add another next year.
Sources
About Icelandic MAT Kitchen
Traditional Icelandic recipes tested in home kitchens — from lamb soup to kleinur.