In Iceland, meals are not thought of as starter/main/dessert but as table hours that follow the light and seasons: morgunmatur (morning, skyr and porridge), hádegismatur or kvöldmatur (the warm meal of fish and potatoes), kaffitími (coffee break with sweets), and above all the great tradition of preservation — súrmatur (fermented foods), bread baked in hot earth, berries and plants gathered to last through winter. On an island poor in trees and battered by cold, keeping food is as important as cooking it.

Neither yogurt nor cheese: skyr is a skimmed milk curd that is strained, a live ferment brought by Norse settlers in the 9th century and never abandoned since. Tangy, dense, high in protein, it has nourished Icelanders through a thousand winters and remains the dairy soul of every Icelandic table, including Björk's.