Bread Baked in the Ground
Iceland has two breads that matter and they were built for opposite constraints.
One takes a full day and no fuel at all. The other takes about ninety seconds and needs only a hot surface. Between them they cover a country that had abundant heat coming out of the ground and almost no wood to burn on top of it.
Rúgbrauð
Dark rye. Dense enough that a loaf feels heavier than it looks. Faintly sweet, close-grained, no crust to speak of, sliced thin because thick slices are too much.
The version that gets the attention is hverabrauð — hot spring bread. The dough goes into a sealed tin, the tin gets buried in geothermally heated ground near a hot spring, and it stays there for the better part of a day. The steam does the work. No oven, no fuel, no attention.
This is not a museum piece. Geothermal baking is still a common way to make this style of bread in Iceland, and you can watch it being done near Laugarvatn, where the ground is warm enough to bake in and the loaves come out of the black sand hot. It is the least theatrical impressive thing in the country — someone digs a hole, pulls out a tin, and hands you bread.
What we won't tell you is that the loaf in your basket came out of the ground. Plenty of rúgbrauð is oven-steamed instead, and unless a product page says otherwise, that's the safe assumption. The difference is smaller than you'd hope: the long, slow, wet heat is what makes this bread, and an oven reproduces it closely. What the buried version adds is a slightly deeper caramelisation and a better story.
What to do with it
Butter, thickly. Then either smoked lamb or harðfiskur on top. That's the standard construction and it hasn't changed.
It's also very good with skyr, which sounds wrong and is a common Icelandic breakfast. And it works under smoked or pickled fish in a way that a standard rye doesn't, because the sweetness cuts the salt.
It keeps for over a week wrapped, and it freezes well sliced.
Flatkökur
The other bread. Thin unleavened rye rounds, dark-flecked from being cooked directly on a hot plate — traditionally on the top of a stove or over an open fire, which is why they're blistered and slightly scorched in patches.
No yeast, no rising, no oven. Rye flour, water, sometimes a little salt. Cooked in under two minutes a side.
They are soft and pliable rather than crisp, closer to a flatbread than to a cracker, and they're sold in stacks that go quickly.
The correct use of a flatkaka
Cold butter, then hangikjöt. In that order, and with more butter than seems reasonable.
This is the single most common Icelandic snack that visitors have had without knowing what it was — at a petrol station, in a lunch buffet, handed over at someone's house. If you're trying to identify a specific taste memory from Iceland and you can't name it, there's a decent chance it was this.
Which one is the real Icelandic bread
Icelanders will argue this and the argument is mostly generational and regional. Rúgbrauð has the better story. Flatkökur have the better hit rate — they're eaten far more often and by more people.
Our position, for what it's worth: rúgbrauð is the one you'll show people, flatkökur are the one you'll finish first.
Buy both. They're the cheapest way to make everything else in an order taste like it did in Iceland, and neither of them is the star of the meal — they're the thing that holds the meal together.
Browse the bakery for rúgbrauð, or go straight to Flatkökur, Kjarnafæði — 4 pieces, $4.99. Both ship well and both freeze.