Christmas in Iceland

I attempted to recreate Christmas in Iceland, and very quickly discovered I do not have the necessary baking skills. So this became a slightly less aggressive set of Homeschool Christmas and geography lesson, and instead focused a bit more on the spirit of the activity.

Christmas in Iceland

So, an Iceland tradition is to make leaf bread. I was going to make it from scratch and had included a recipe for it in my printables, but as I was looking at it I realized it makes a lot, and it measures it in a way I don’t have an easy way to measure. I don’t have a kitchen scale, so I’m not sure how I’d measure out 2 pounds of flour.

So, I opted to use canned biscuits and let them try and shape them into leaf shapes. Which lasted for all of 10 seconds, and changed into this:

I think that particular one is a snowman. Maybe. They changed what they were making constantly.

And here he’s making his biscuit into a beard. I really can’t make this stuff up.

Well, after they’d played with it sufficiently, they let me fry up their bread. Leaf bread is fried in oil. Afterwards, we rolled ours in sugar to make it sweet. I don’t think that’s strictly speaking an Icelandic tradition, but it was fun.

The boys weren’t too keen on them, but Princess and I loved them. Then we had some friends over that afternoon to finish off the mystery, and the kids devoured the rest while the Moms kicked them outside to play. It was loads of fun.

A bit of history behind this Christmas in Iceland tradition

Traditionally, in Iceland, they don’t have a lot of grain and flour products because their growing season is so short. So, they traditionally will have lots of breads and cakes at holidays and things because that is the main time they get to eat them. So, for them, it was a big deal to have leaf bread, and it was made into works of art.

What other traditions are there in Iceland?

Well, you’ll see in our Christmas in Iceland lapbook, they had Yule Lads, which sounded a bit to me like Santa’s elves, so I need to do more research on them.