Reykjavík Grapevine - 18.05.2012, Side 8

8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 6 — 2012
Well, you’d think that it were a
modernist masterpiece by Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe or Walter Gro-
pius judging by the hordes of peo-
ple who went to see it on opening
day. But no, it’s a supersized hard-
ware store called Bauhaus, which
has outlets in sixteen countries. A
whopping six percent of Iceland’s
total population visited the store on
opening day, purchasing goods for
over a billion krónur. That is about
eight million dollars, six million eu-
ros or, in British terms, an arseload
of dosh. That’s one reason Iceland
has been abuzz about Bauhaus; the
other is that it’s not often that the
undead rise from their grave.
CONSUMERS AREN'T BRAINLESS
zOMBIES, YOU LATTE-SIPPING
ELITIST!
I wasn’t saying that the twenty thou-
sand hardware store aficionados are
undead, but that this branch of Bau-
haus is. It was originally supposed to
open in 2008, but because Iceland went
straight to financial hell that year, plans
were put on hold indefinitely. Since the
financial crash, it has been referred to
as the German Ruin, the Abandoned
Farm, and the Haunted Mansion, as it
sat derelict on top of a prominent hill on
the outskirts of the city.
WAS IT LIT UP AT NIGHT BY
FORKEd LIGHTNING ACCOMPA-
NIEd BY THUNdER THAT SOUNdEd
LIKE THE CACKLING OF A THOU-
SANd EVIL GRINS?
It wasn't so much Dracula's Castle as it
was a big box of sadness to remind ev-
eryone who drove by that a lot of money
was spent before the crash on things
that came to nothing. Near Bauhaus is
perhaps the most depressing of such
sights: the desolate, barely inhabited
Úlfarársdalur neighbourhood, which
looks more like a set for an especially
bleak zombie apocalypse movie than a
place to live. But then, seemingly out of
nowhere, Bauhaus rose from the dead.
It’s an unconventional marketing strat-
egy, but there is nothing that will en-
sure that a whole nation knows about
you like becoming the metaphorical
gravestone of its financial system.
WOULdN'T THAT KEEP PEOPLE
AWAY? WHY dId THE HORdE dE-
SCENd ON THIS SYMBOL OF ECO-
NOMIC dEVASTATION?
Despite having become an indelible
signifier of bad times, Bauhaus is still
a foreign retailer and therefore new
and shiny. This is certainly not the first
time that Icelanders have gone a bit
overboard when a new store of foreign
origin enters the market. Just this past
winter Icelandic consumers welcomed
the mildly stylish Swedish clothing
chain Lindex like it was the second
coming of Zombie Coco Chanel.
To understand how six percent of
the inhabitants of a country can be
induced to swarm the opening of a
German hardware store, you have to
remember that the nation of Iceland is
like a sad polar bear, adrift in the North
Atlantic, hungry for novelty. Living in
Iceland means you are always an ocean
away from anything new and different.
So when an exotic, foreign store ar-
rives on these shores, Icelanders greet
it with the bewildered excitement of a
starving polar bear chancing upon a
Midsummer's Night orgy.
MIdSUMMER'S NIGHT ORGY, YOU
SAY. I dON'T SUPPOSE YOU COULd
INTROdUCE ME...
No, but you can experience what it
feels like to be a lonely polar bear or
the last survivor of a zombie apoca-
lypse by wandering amongst the hun-
dreds of bathroom products, tarpaulin
and industrial lubricants in the twenty
two thousand square metre store. That
is, converted to English measurements,
big enough to have an orgy in with-
out anyone noticing. In the eastern-
most corner. On the Solstice. Tell them
Grapevine sent you.
Iceland | Commerce
So What's This Bauhaus Thing I Keep Hearing About?
“Living in Iceland
means you are always
an ocean away from
anything new and dif-
ferent.”
Have you been to Bauhaus yet? Did you buy lots of cool power tools at re-
duced prices? Were you maybe in that riot? Have Icelanders 'gone too far'?
letters@grapevine.is
Opinion | Lynn Klein
Vegetarians
Beware!
You’d think these foods were safe to
eat, but no…
So, you’re visiting Iceland for the
first time, and you want to expe-
rience as much of Iceland’s cul-
ture as possible, which means
trying some classic Icelandic ed-
ibles. If you’re vegetarian, you’ll skip some
traditional dishes like fish and lamb. But
there’s always skyr and Icelandic cheese to
keep your protein intake high… or is there?
Are you familiar with rennet? It’s an en-
zyme used in dairy products to make milk
coagulate. It is typically produced in the
stomachs of young mammals, which use it
for the same purpose, to digest their moth-
er’s milk. As this rennet is taken from the
stomachs of dead animals, it is not vegetar-
ian, and renders any product that is made
with it non-vegetarian.
As a vegetarian, you might know this
and try to avoid such products—though
vegetarian rennet is sometimes used as
well. The problem is that the package does
not have to state whether the rennet that is
used is vegetarian or made with animal en-
zymes (at least here in Iceland). The ingre-
dient to look for in Iceland is “ostahleypir,”
but if you don’t get in touch with the pro-
ducers themselves, you won’t know for sure
whether your favourite cheese is vegetarian
or not.
So which Icelandic products are actually
made with rennet?
Skyr is a popular dairy product invented
by accident hundreds of years ago. It’s sold
in all kinds of flavours, from vanilla to cara-
mel. Although it appears to be yoghurt, it is
actually a type of soft cheese and tastes a bit
sour. As it is very low in fat it is excellent for
a healthy diet. It also contains more protein
than regular yoghurt as the water in the
milk is strained off.
For hundreds of years skyr has been
made with rennet. The largest dairy produc-
er, Mjólkursamsalan (MS), does not use a
coagulant in their production of skyr (which
includes skyr.is). However, the second larg-
est producer of skyr, KEA, still produces it
this way. So, if you really want to stick to
your vegetarian diet, don’t eat KEA skyr.
The second dairy product that is pro-
duced with rennet on a large scale is cheese.
You can find an abundance of various
cheeses made in Iceland in the refrigerated
aisle at any grocery store—from gouda to
mozzarella to cheddar.
We checked with MS, which confirmed
that they are using animal rennet for most
of their cheeses: “The ones that are without
animal rennet are our cream cheeses, but
they are without rennet or ostahleypir al-
together.” In fact, even their sour cream is
made with rennet, and, even more surpris-
ingly, it also contains gelatine.
So if you love cheese, but want to scrap ren-
net, you should avoid any product made
with ostahleypir. To keep your diet veg-
etarian, you might have to turn to organic
producers, such as Biobú, which tend not to
use animal rennet. But still, always check
before consuming.
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