6 Likes
Generally Iceland is great, but they do still hunt and eat whales. Although that may be coming to an end, hooray!
One other thing about Iceland, because they have a very small and isolated population, there is an app which allows you to look up a potential date to make sure you’re not closely related to them. So as an outsider moving to Iceland, you represent a pool of untapped genetic diversity 
3 Likes
As proved with Science!
(tldr all burgers will dehydrate rapidly and mold needs moisture to grow)
5 Likes
High cost of imports made it unprofitable to keep them open - 2009 financial crisis depreciating Iceland’s currency was the dealbreaker.
Everything in Iceland is expensive because of it’s location.
4 Likes
Thanks! I didn’t connect the dates, but now it’s obvious!
1 Like
We call those people “savages” with no taste… 
She’s the real deal, as a artist, a musician, and producer…
4 Likes
Covid willing, I’m headed back to Iceland this summer! Last time I was there, I missed the Penis Museum. Now I need to add the Last McDonald’s burger to the list of things to see!
2 Likes
Hmm. Can’t help anyone with that, but otherwise cool.
Another word: Svið.
You can now get it on a pizza:
1 Like
If you’re desperate for a near-McDonald’s experience in Iceland, there is Metro Burger and its Heimsborgari is very similar to a Big Mac:
But seriously, it’s Iceland - eat the lamb, or the cod, or the char, or the langoustine, or the dolphin - no not the dolphin…
1 Like
Good suggestions!
I have no interest in eating McDonalds when I travel, and I love eating local dishes. Just curious why they left Iceland, since it seems like it would take a lot to dislodge them from a market.
I noticed a distinct lack of American fast food places all over Iceland when we visited. An occasional Subway, KFC or Dominos was about it and those were really only in and around Reykjavik. No Starbucks. No Walmart or Target. No American chain restaurants.
In fact, fast food in general was just not prevalent.
Man…the cod and char was outstanding everywhere we went. So was the lamb.
3 Likes
It’s generally found in the petrol stations. Once you are out of Reykjavík and the other bigger towns, the population gets too small for dedicated restaurants, so the local N1 or Olis station is the place where people go to get a burger and the like.
Or, in the middle of winter, ice cream dipped in liquorice.
1 Like
In 2008 when the Icelandic banking system imploded almost overnight, the currency had already declined by more than 30% since the beginning of the year and interest rates were at 15%. At the beginning of October you could get 130 krónur to the Euro, by the end of the month it was close to 350.
Imports of all kinds became hideously expensive, Iceland struggled to raise foreign currency to pay for imports and the middle class was being wiped out as their mortgages (often directly linked to foreign currency rates) doubled or tripled even as company after company collapsed. The likes of McDonald’s in Iceland couldn’t get supplied because they didn’t have the currency and there weren’t enough people with any money to buy the products. So they left.
It was a pretty grim time and people got really scared because a country in Western Europe hadn’t been through anything like this in a long time. Iceland didn’t have many friends - it was involved in a bitter dispute with the UK over some shady dealings by Icelandic banks in the UK and even its traditional nordic allies were reluctant to bail it out. Mixed with the stinking corruption of the Independence Party and its links to the central bank of Iceland and to the right-wing press in the country, it was a recipe for disaster. My Icelandic friends were pretty traumatised, going from being world-conquerors hailed in the domestic press as a new breed of vikings to staring disaster in the face in just a few weeks.
Incredibly, the people kind of won - the government was thrown out, the banks completely restructured (which pissed off foreign creditors) and even some people ended up in jail. But it was incredibly traumatic.
And now of course, it’s kind of happening again - but this time with a massive tourist bubble spiking prices for housing and the like ever higher. Let’s just hope it doesn’t go the same way.
But back to the food - the ice cream is AMAZING and skyr is the food of the gods.
3 Likes
I drove the ring road a few years ago and like @MikeR said, hot dogs (we found them mostly at gas stations) were the go-to fast food. Lots of variety of fresh toppings.
Like you said, American brands were hard to find in and around Reykjavik and almost impossible to find outside of it.
I would guess at Scandinavian influence rather than US for them.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
