Iceland review - 2015, Qupperneq 52

50 ICELAND REVIEW
It’s like a sweet for them, they’re crazy about
it—you don’t have to convince them to eat it.
They love the leaves but they’ll eat everything,
all the way down the stem,” farmer Halla Sigríður
Steinólfsdóttir says of her sheep’s love of angelica.
Gimpi the lamb is certainly happy. He munches
away at sprigs of the plant as Halla’s husband,
Guðmundur Gíslason, holds him for the camera. It’s
a sunny late afternoon when the photographer and I
visit the couple’s farm, Ytri-Fagridalur, in the Dalir
region. The patch of angelica plants, with their large
green umbels of whitish-green flowers, is set against
a stunning backdrop: Breiðafjörður bay with its mul-
titude of small islands off the coast of West Iceland.
TASTE FOR THE SURROUNDINGS
Angelica, sometimes called ‘angel’s herb’—the plant’s
name means ‘angelic’ in Latin—has been used in
Iceland since settlement, over 1100 years ago, and
across northern Europe, as a natural remedy to
treat a range of ailments, as a flavor additive and as
an important food source. Revered for its qualities,
angelica was collected in the wild and grown in gar-
dens. Still today angelica is used in modern herbal
medicine and teas, as well as in cooking, baking and
to make schnapps.
Halla and Guðmundur first started feeding their
lambs angelica in 2007 as part of an experimental
project carried out in cooperation with Matís, a gov-
ernment-owned research company, the Agricultural
University of Iceland and the Agricultural Association
of West Iceland. “We’d seen research showing that
the food animals are fed has a big impact on the taste
of their meat,” says Halla of the inspiration for the
project. The results of blind taste testing of lamb fed
on angelica and regular grass-fed lamb confirmed
The couple, with Gimpi the lamb,
in the angelica field overlooking
Breiðafjörður.