Eau d'Hákarl

"The time has come," the Puffin said,
to gobble many things:
like whale and severed sheep head,
rotten shark and brennivín.

From the University of Iceland's Science Web,
the Duck presents her very own (very lazy, innacurate) translation of:

Q. Do some people actually like rotten shark meat for real,
or are they just pretending?

A. In order to answer this question, the editor of Science Web undertook a great deal of research into the issue. Much time and effort was spent in the quest, but an answer was at long last reached. The research method and results will be described below.

The first trial took place at an unnamed þorrablót. A member of the Science Web team stood beside the hákarl at the buffet table and asked those people who helped themselves to it, "Do you like rotten shark meat for real or are you just pretending to eat it so that you´ll look cooler than you are?" 100% of those who responded said that they liked hákarl but a 93% of those polled refused to answer. Two threw water over the researcher and three told him to go home.

The second trial took place with subjects being connected to a lie detector on loan from the CIA, and among the questions that they were asked to answer was a question on how they liked hákarl. It came to light that many answered this question untruthfully. At the height of our trial period we received the news that lie detectors are considered extremely unreliable and that evidence gathered using them cannot be considered trustworthy, so the lie detector was switched for a thumb screw. After this innovation, every last participant confessed that he did not like rotten shark at all.

Finally, a trial was done in which a hungry subject was left alone in a room with a table full of þorramatur. A hidden camera recorded the proceedings. It came to light that 40% of subjects helped themselves to shark meat on their plate but then threw it away, 25% ate shark meat, and 35% did not. Those subjects who ate the shark were afterwards put through rigorous psychological testing. Around 70% of them were discovered to have self-deceptive tendancies and therefore none of them found hákarl to be good in reality, although they imagined it to themselves. When deeper research was done on the three participants who did not have self-deceptive tendancies it was discovered that one of them was considered to be a masochist, the second had lost all sense of taste at the age of five due to a head injury and the third had been aware of the hidden camera.

Our conclusion is that although it is possible that someone might like rotten shark meat for real, there is no concrete evidence that this is the case. In the future, the Science Web is planning to conduct similar research on fans of mushy cheese & heavy metal and people who listen to the President and Prime Minister's New Year's speeches.

Disclaimer: the information above was completely made up and not to be used for scientific purposes.

(stolen from http://visindavefur.hi.is/svar.asp?id=3592)