Warming the pans while your page comes together
Icelandic cuisine · 5 min read
June 14, 2026
Christmas in Iceland isn't a single day of eating — it stretches across the thirteen days leading up to Christmas Eve, tied to the tradition of the thirteen Yule Lads (jólasveinar) who visit one by one, leaving small gifts in children's shoes. Alongside that build-up runs a parallel food tradition: office parties, family gatherings, and community events packed with the same handful of dishes that show up, in one form or another, at nearly every table in the country come December.
Christmas Eve itself, rather than Christmas Day, is the main event — the big family meal happens on the evening of the 24th, and that's where the most traditional dishes take center stage.
Smoked lamb, hangikjöt, is the closest thing Iceland has to a single defining Christmas dish. The meat is cured and smoked, traditionally over birch wood or dried sheep dung, giving it a deep, distinctive flavor that's milder and less sweet than a lot of other cured meats. It's typically boiled before serving, then sliced and served either warm with a white béchamel-style sauce and green peas, or cold on flatbread or rúgbrauð with butter.
Hangikjöt shows up well beyond December 24th too — leftover slices make excellent sandwiches for the rest of the holiday season, and many households eat it more than once across the thirteen days.
Laufabrauð, literally "leaf bread," is a thin, round, unleavened bread that's deep-fried and decorated with elaborate cut patterns before cooking — swirls, leaves, geometric shapes cut into the dough with a small knife or a special laufabrauð wheel. It's most strongly associated with northern Iceland, though the tradition has spread nationwide.
What makes laufabrauð distinctive isn't just the eating — it's the making. Cutting laufabrauð is a genuine family and community event, often held weeks before Christmas, where several generations sit around a table together cutting patterns into stacks of dough before it all gets fried. For many families, the laufabrauð-cutting evening is as much a piece of the Christmas tradition as the meal itself.
No Icelandic Christmas table is complete without malt og appelsín — a mix of malt extract soda (a dark, slightly sweet, non-alcoholic malt beverage) and orange soda, combined in one glass. It's specific enough to the season that plain malt or plain orange soda simply don't carry the same association; the combination itself is what reads as "Christmas" to most Icelanders, drunk by kids and adults alike alongside the Christmas Eve meal.
Long before the 24th arrives, most working Icelanders will have already attended at least one jólahlaðborð — a Christmas buffet, typically hosted by an employer, club, or group of friends sometime in November or early December. These spreads usually mix traditional dishes (hangikjöt, laufabrauð, herring, pickled dishes) with more general holiday buffet fare, and they function as much as a social season-opener as a meal. For many people, jólahlaðborð season effectively marks the real start of Christmas, well before the tree goes up.
For households that don't go the hangikjöt route on Christmas Eve, ptarmigan (rjúpa) is the classic alternative — a wild game bird traditionally hunted in the highlands in autumn, then slow-cooked with a rich, dark gravy. It's more work and, depending on hunting success that year, not always easy to source, which keeps it feeling like a special-occasion dish rather than an everyday one.
None of these dishes require a full holiday production to enjoy — hangikjöt sandwiches work as a quick weeknight lunch any time of year, and malt og appelsín is a five-second pour whenever you want a taste of the season. If you're planning a full jólahlaðborð at home or just want to keep hangikjöt in regular rotation, it's worth saving the exact preparation you like in a so it's ready to go, and blocking out a slot on the in the run-up to the 24th so cooking a proper Christmas Eve dinner doesn't get squeezed out by everything else happening that week.
Hangikjöt (smoked lamb), served warm with a white sauce and peas or cold with flatbread, is the most common traditional main dish, though rjúpa (ptarmigan) is a well-known alternative in many households.
Laufabrauð is a thin, deep-fried, unleavened bread decorated with intricate cut patterns before frying. Cutting the patterns is traditionally a family activity done together in the weeks before Christmas, especially strongly associated with northern Iceland.
Malt og appelsín is a mix of non-alcoholic malt soda and orange soda, traditionally drunk at Christmas in Iceland. Neither drink alone carries the same seasonal association as the combination.
A jólahlaðborð is a Christmas buffet, usually hosted by workplaces, clubs, or groups of friends in November or December, mixing traditional Icelandic Christmas dishes with general holiday buffet fare.