Icelandic Chocolate, Ranked Honestly
A ranking is only useful if the person making it is prepared to be wrong in public. So: this is ours, we sell all of these, and we've put the one we sell the most of below one we sell less of.
1. Þristur — Sambó, 250g, $9.99
Chocolate-covered liquorice, and the bag most often handed to a visitor as a first test.
It wins because it does one thing with complete confidence. The chocolate is soft and slightly grainy, the liquorice inside is firm and salted, and the ratio is right — enough chocolate to carry it, not so much that the liquorice becomes a surprise in the middle.
It's also the product most likely to trigger a specific memory. That's not a flavour argument, but it's a real one.
2. Síríus Rjómasúkkulaði — Nói Síríus, 150g, $7.99
Plain milk chocolate in a flat block. The default chocolate of Iceland.
It's not complicated and it isn't trying to be. What it has is a specific sweetness and a soft melt that most European milk chocolate doesn't share, and Icelanders who move abroad complain about missing it more than they complain about missing anything else on this site.
If you want one bar to understand what Icelandic chocolate tastes like without any liquorice involved, this is it.
3. Nóa Kropp — Nói Síríus, 240g, $9.99
Chocolate-coated corn puffs. Sounds unpromising, disappears fastest.
The texture is the whole point — light, crunchy, and impossible to eat four of. It's the bag that gets opened at the start of a film and finished before the halfway mark, which is why the cinema-sized version exists at $9.99.
Third rather than first only because it's a snack rather than a bar. On volume consumed it would win.
4. Hraunbitar — Góa, 200g, $9.99
Lava bites. Wafer and chocolate, named for a lava field and roughly shaped like one.
Fine. Genuinely fine. It's a wafer product and there are wafer products everywhere. It's on this list because Icelanders will be annoyed if it isn't, and because the name is better than the bar.
Æði Bitar, also Góa, also $9.99, is the coconut version and is the better of the two if you like coconut.
5. Möndlur — Freyja, 125g, $8.99
Caramels. Not really chocolate, and included because Freyja deserves representation and because these are the thing most often left in a bowl at someone's house.
Softer and sweeter than everything above. The diplomatic option, and the one to send to someone who found salted liquorice too aggressive.
The two we'd actually recommend that aren't on the list
Caramel & Sea Salt Dark Chocolate from Nói Síríus, $11.99, is the best-made bar we carry and sits outside the ranking because it's competing with good dark chocolate from anywhere rather than with the rest of this page.
Góu Kúlur at $4.99 is the cheapest thing in the collection and the one most likely to end up in a repeat order.
Where salted liquorice sits
Chocolate-covered salted liquorice isn't ranked here as chocolate, because it isn't really chocolate — it's a liquorice product with a chocolate coating, and it belongs in a different argument.
That said, if you already know you like salmíak, it's the thing to order and everything above becomes secondary.
What we'd actually buy
One Þristur, one Rjómasúkkulaði, one bag of Nóa Kropp. Around $28, covers the full range from easy to difficult, and gives you a real answer about which end you're on.
We expect to be told we're wrong about the order. That's the point of publishing it.
Browse the chocolate collection — thirty-one products, from $4.99.