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From Away.com
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Finding Your Inner Viking (cont.)
Rotten Duck Eggs, and other Delicacies
In the morning, Mike and I pack a fresh Corolla, and head east to the land of culinary queerness. We continue around the lake to Reykjahlith, population 250, where, entirely by chance, the brother of our hotel-keeper smokes fish.

"Sheep's manure," Sigfus Illugason corrects me when I ask about the smoke leaking from a shed in the yard. "No wood."



Each spring, he explains, the packed manure is cut in squares from the barn, then used to smoke char, a troutish fish. He opens the door, and shows me the fuel, smoldering thickly. And then, of course, he offers me a bite. Of fish.

The innards have turned gray-yellow, and taste like cheese and lobster—with a hint of volcano.
I sigh. Sigfus, tall and hawk-beaked, separates a strip of translucent, orange flesh from its metallic skin. I hold it. It's softer than nova lox, almost raw. I nibble. The flesh is buttery, but sweetly fishy, and infused with a smokiness that fills my head. It's sublime. It is even, as Einar promised, natural and wonderful. Sigfus, pleased, asks us to return in the morning to try ancient, boiled duck eggs.

If you thought man could invent no further use for the sheep shit, think again. Duck eggs, collected from abandoned and over-loaded nests for centuries by farmers like Sigfus, are stored in ashes of the dung for a year; then they're boiled and eaten. (Anyone who fears this tradition has a negative effect on the duck population should go and have a look for themselves—and should watch leggy Sigfus make his rounds among the setting ducks, fussing like a midwife.)

Sigfus rips into the steaming eggs that morning, eagerly tasting a dab from each, and passing them to me. The innards have turned gray-yellow, and taste like cheese and lobster—with a hint of volcano.

It's possible I entered too deeply into the spirit of the occasion. Or perhaps it was the dense, sweet loaf of bread I bought, hot from the earth of the underground bakery. It could have been the "hard-fish," a fibrous mat of dry fish that claimed boldly to be "Iceland's favourite snack for 1,000 years." It could have been the endless days of endless days, or sun inebriation. At any rate, I crawled into bed that noon, and didn't come out until late at night for ice-cream dipped in liquid licorice. It looks like lava on a cone, but it cured me.
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