Usch!

I don’t mean to sound negative with my focus on the things I didn’t see on my recent trip to Iceland, Denmark and Sweden, but in addition to the ixnay on the Phallological Museum of Reykjavik regretfully not experienced, we also didn’t get to visit the Disgusting Food Museum of Malmö.

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Oh sigh, but why? To both prospects, my kids decreed “nope.” Not to mention that for the Swedish leg of our journey, for which we had all of a few hours until lunchtime demanded we hightail it over the 10-mile bridge back to the country of our hotel, there just wasn’t the time.

You might also say, despite the allure of beautifully elaborate cream puffs taunting us behind every bakery glass case, that the underbelly of these Nordic cuisines is, in fact, pretty yuck (which in Swedish translates to usch). I’ve got one pescatarian kid who is only willing to eat the non-exotic tunafish in a can merely because it’s not cute and furry and one kid who just doesn’t want to eat any fish at all, so together we were navigating some grim territory with these fermented fishies.

A sampling of the menu at our first stop, harbor town of Hafnarfjordur, Iceland, in the lovely if kitschy Viking Hotel with its adjacent viking-themed restaurant Fjorugardurinn (photos from bemused customer reviews on Trip Advisor), offers up heads of sheep and suspicious chunks of ram’s testicles presented like a really tragic charcuterie board. (Oh how this previous pizzle theme endures no matter what!)

What’s whey pickled food? What’s Þorri? Intrepid or crazy Icelanders still celebrate the mid-winter holiday (from mid-January to mid-February) of Þorrablót, which once paid homage to Norse thunder god Thor (perhaps no relation etymologically speaking with the word Þór, but people nonetheless toast Þór/Thor interchangeably during their celebration which used to involve pagan sacrifices).

The holiday fare reflects the traditional food of the desolate, frozen time of mid-winter when what you had available was just the wurst. Your old food by now was likely cured/smoked/fermented/pickled such as, fermented shark (hákarl), sheep’s head (svið), ram’s testicles (hrútspungar), and dried fish (harðfiskur). Whey-pickling means you are using the whey (as in “curds and whey” and “along came a spider”) as your preserving agent. Or as my AI overview offers in a hipster foodie way, “Whey-pickled food refers to the use of liquid whey (a byproduct of yogurt or cheese making) as a starter culture in the lacto-fermentation process, creating probiotic-rich, fermented vegetables, rather than traditional vinegar pickling.”

You lost the winteriest Vikings at that mention of vegetables there. We’re not doing greens in these parts and especially not this time of year. Rather this informative video (complete with sidekick gagging) mentions the “rotten” shark, “sour” naughty bits, and also the lovely blood sausage or “sheep’s blood wrapped in a ram’s stomach.”

Where is that Black Death aquavit when you need it. Let’s do shots.

While we’re here dying for a palate cleanse, Brennivín is the signature liquor of Iceland, also known as “Black Death” though it is deceptively clear. From Wikipedia, “it is distilled from fermented grain mash and then combined with Iceland’s very soft, high-pH water, and flavored only with caraway. A clear, savory, herbal spirit, the taste is often described as having notes of fresh rye bread.” That all sounds very refreshing right now and I’d have some if only everything around here wasn’t so damn expensive.

The “blackness” of this drink actually stems from 1935 when Iceland was only partially emerging from Prohibition (news to me that other countries had that too). The government mandated a black label on the aquavit which of course made it more popular, along with its 75 proof alcohol count. Which is pretty standard (or even low) in the spirit world but still might help you forget that it’s often paired with that fermented shark during that dreadful festival.

Another stop on our tour of the weird world of Nordic cold cuisine reiterated the greatest hits playlist, though maybe some of this informational text on the walls of the Viking World museum in Keflavik got a little lost in translation. They seem to merge below the pickling means with the pickled products in a confusing and awful stew of ick. Are we pickling our food in seal flippers and whale fat, or eating the pickled flippers and fat? And does it even matter at this point? Let’s not argue over who killed who.

With all of this funky junk in our midst, who needs a Disgusting Food Museum? But I admit, I wanted to go explore the liminal, vaguely edible space where even the Scandis might draw the line. From the museum’s intro materials online:

On the menu at the food museum (which includes 80 items, some available for smelling and/or tasting at the bar, if you dare) is:

• Surströmming – fermented herring from Sweden
• Cuy – roasted guinea pigs from Peru
• Casu marzu – maggot-infested cheese from Sardinia
• Stinky tofu – pungent bean curd from China
• Hákarl – well-aged shark from Iceland
• Durian – infamously stinky fruit from Thailand

Ah the rank durian, which somehow my brother found in Brooklyn and put in terrible Tupperware which he spooned his creamy stank-fruit from for days, ruining my shared apartment for any humans for weeks.

I regret from my trip to Thailand not trying any of the roasted bug buffet I found at an outdoor food stand. I am fairly adventurous of palate save for maybe most organ meats, but in that moment I think traveling alone made me timid. I do happily eat plenty of foods that disgust my kids: anchovies, bleu cheese, ground cricket powder in a power bar, and yes, even pickled herring, like the mad Dane that I am (ancestrally speaking).

I learned on this trip to not just jump eagerly into the morning fish of the cold breakfast buffet as if it may be the very same you remember from your childhood, when Dad had a jar of these preserved chunks with onions as a special occasional treat in the fridge. I actually recall that herring as delicious and joining him when he forked out a precious piece. But this fish in the Viking Hotel breakfast was not crisp and vinegary as I remembered but rather soft, lukewarm and suspicious, in both creamy white and grey varieties. Could this be the difference between a whey ferment and a pickle? I choose pickle. Maybe there’s a reason they serve this to us in a faux cave with very dim lighting.

What’s a disgusting food you won’t eat? Or better yet, what’s something perceived by others as disgusting that you will?