A lovely Christmas Buffet at Fjörukráin Viking Restaurant in Iceland

I often visit the Viking restaurant Fjörukráin at the Viking Village just before Christmas to get a taste of their Christmas buffet, or jólahlaðborð as we call them in Icelandic. 

Christmas buffets are ever so popular amongst us locals and the restaurants quickly get fully booked.

Top photo: at the lovely Christmas buffet

Entertainment at Fjörukráin

This restaurant, Fjörukráin, is my favourite restaurant and here you enter the world of the Vikings! It is located in the second oldest building in Hafnarfjörður town, built in 1841.  We dined in the very ornate Viking-style restaurant on the second floor.

What added to the cosy atmosphere was that there were singers dressed as Vikings walking from table to table singing beautiful Icelandic songs.

The Christmas buffet

The Christmas buffets in Iceland consist of traditional Icelandic food. F.ex. smoked leg of lamb, hangikjöt, which is an Icelandic delicacy. It is boiled, sliced and served cold with potatoes in white sauce.

Another essential speciality at the Christmas buffets is the traditional laufabrauð or leaf bread. It is a paper-thin deep-fried round bread, beautifully decorated.

In my family, we gather around two weeks before Christmas and make laufabrauð, which I find to be a lovely Christmas tradition. 

Leaf bread at Fjörukráin

The dough is flattened and cut into a round shape, then you make tiny holes in it with a fork. In my home, we run a special brass roller through it and flip over every second leave of the decorations, which were made with this roller, and fasten it.

You can make various decorations with the roller. Traditionally though the bread was cut with knives.

The reason why this bread is so thin is probably a shortage of wheat in Iceland through the centuries. By making the bread so papery thin more people could eat this delicacy. And the decorations made this paper-thin bread look prettier.

Cured salmon gravlax on the Christmas buffet

Another delicacy is smoked salmon and the cured salmon gravlax (graflax in Icelandic). You can also find turkey, a smoked rack of pork, reindeer meatballs, herring, the traditional rye bread, paté, and all the essential trimmings.

I have so many food allergies that I only ever eat the very yummy fries at Fjörukráin - and down them with the Icelandic schnapps brennivín. This is my mother-in-law's plate in front of me, just to show you a plate filled with food from the Christmas buffet :)

Christmas buffet at Fjörukráin

If you read my previous travel-blog on the Viking Village you can compare the photos and see how different the Icelandic seasons are.

My previous travel-blog is written in the summertime whereas this blog is written on a very cold evening in December when everything was covered in snow and frozen solid.

Beautiful Fjörukráin in the snow

The Christmas buffet at Fjörukráin restaurant is offered on weekends from mid-November every year.

The Viking Village is located in Hafnarfjörður town in the Great Reykjavík area. You can get there by catching bus number 1, or if you have rented a car in Reykjavík you can drive to the Viking Village in a little over 15 minutes.

Or you can stay at Hotel Viking in the Viking Village. I stayed there once and had a lovely stay: A lovely stay at Hotel Viking at the Viking Village

A highly recommended visit if you want to get a taste of Icelandic Christmas food in Viking surroundings. We always have a very enjoyable, cosy evening at the Viking Village :) 

If you want to book a table for the Christmas buffet you can contact birna@fjorukrain.is.

Have a lovely time :)