This is not a skate.
But in Sweden it is a skata, I have just learned. In Norway skjære, England magpie. In Iceland it isn't anything, because these raucous birds have never found there way there outside of the dictionary, but I am newly given to understand that the name is skjór.
In Iceland skata is a skate and not a magpie at all. So is tindabikkja, an amusing word if ever there were one. But skata seems to be the one of the two that is most used in connection with the nasty-smelling fermented starry ray eaten every December 23 in honor of St. Þorlákur and, really, in honor of Icelanders' historical ability to survive on a diet that would have qualified as a natural disaster anywhere else.
The town today, as on every Þorláksmessa, lies under a choking haze of skötulykt, a noxious ammoniac vapor reminiscent of toilet cleaner fumes or the emissions of an enormous and territorial tomcat. Perhaps the jólaköttur himself.
Imagine if the traditional dish were made of the Swedish skata, a magpie-pie. There would be a nursery rhyme about it, even.
No, wait. Those were blackbirds. Fjárinn.
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