Kleina and the Icelandic Bakery

A kleina is a knot of lightly sweetened dough, flavoured with cardamom or lemon, twisted through a slit in itself and fried, and it has been the standard Icelandic small cake for well over a century. Every bakery has them, so does every supermarket, and they appear on the coffee tray at farms and workplaces without anyone commenting. Around them sits the rest of the repertoire: snuour, a cinnamon snail under a thick slab of glaze; long trays of danish pastry; dense dark bread; and open sandwiches at lunchtime. Bakeries open early and close in the middle of the afternoon, and they are the cheapest way to sit down indoors in an expensive country.

What you actually see

• The kleina - fried cardamom dough twisted into a knot, best on the day it is made.
• Snuour - the cinnamon roll under a heavy glaze, usually chocolate or caramel.
• The bread counter - dense rye and seeded loaves sold alongside the sweet things.
• The lunch trade - open sandwiches and soup at bakery counters from late morning.

When to go

Mornings. Bakeries open early, sometimes before seven, and shut in the middle of the afternoon, so an evening plan does not work. Everything is baked for the day, and in the last hour the choice is thin and the kleinur are dry. Weekend mornings are busy and pleasant, though many places outside the capital close entirely on Sundays.

Honest expectations

A day-old kleina is heavy and greasy, and supermarket packs are noticeably worse than a bakery one. Prices are high for what is essentially fried dough. Sweet things here are very sweet, and the glaze on a snuour puts some people off at first bite. Village bakeries are disappearing, so in small places the petrol station counter is the only option left.

Nearby

Coffee is the standard partner, and the same counters sell the dark rye bread eaten with butter and fish.