At the southern tip of Lagarfljöt lies Fljótsdalur, a scenic river valley carved out by meltwater from the northern edge of Vatnajökull. It’s a wild and storied place, with a glacier research centre, a writer’s retreat, and a monastery dating back to the 1300s. As you trundle up the narrow road, signs of civilisation grow thin until you reach the last farm on the left — a sheep farm called Egilsstaðir that has become a centre of production for an unusual line of handmade treats.
Ann-Marie Schlutz is waiting for us in the yard with a couple of yapping sheepdogs. “This farm is officially the furthest house from Reykjavík,” she says. “There’s nowhere that’s a longer drive.” She’s the mind behind the new dairy company Sauðagull — ‘sheep gold’, in English. After coming from Germany for a summer job in 2016, she met her partner Gunnar, and ended up living on the family farm. Then in 2018, an idea struck.
Milk it
“I was curious why there are so many sheep here, but no sheep milk or cheese products,” says Ann-Marie. “So I developed the idea that we could try to milk some sheep, just for us.” The first sheep milking was done entirely by hand. “I made some cheese, and had people try it at the Christmas market. The reactions were so positive that we were like, ‘Okay, maybe we can do something here.’”
Ann-Marie was also interested in carving out a niche for herself within the farm. Most foreigners end up working in tourism, she says — but she wanted to do something else. “In this rural area you don’t necessarily find work to do with your profession, and what you have in your background,” says Ann-Marie. “It was a dream of mine to start my own thing. So I combined the sheep milk idea with starting a little company. And that’s Sauðagull.”
The idea quickly snowballed. Ann-Marie turned the sheep’s milk into cheese, ice cream, and chocolates, all of which proved popular. Not one to rest on her laurels, she next turned to ways of selling her own products. It would need to be somewhere nearby, with some potential for walk-up customers. And so, in 2021, the idea for the Hengifoss food truck was born.
Milk it good
“We opened the truck that summer, and everything went crazy,” says Ann-Marie. “It was the Covid time, and that summer they advertised that Icelanders should travel within the country. We here in the east were lucky, and the best weather was here, so everybody came east. It coincided with the opening of the truck. And it’s been going ever since.”
The food truck sits at the foot of the Hengifoss trail — a two-hour hike to a series of impressive waterfalls that stream down sheer, naturally geometric basalt cliffs. Hikers go up the left side of the river, and come down the right, passing the food truck on their way down. It’s a welcome sight for hikers, offering hot kjötsúpa, waffles, and Ann-Marie’s sheep milk ice cream in homegrown blueberry or rhubarb flavours.
“Of course, it was a bit of a challenge to set it up,” she says. “To get electricity running, and so forth. We have to take the water from there every day. But it works well, it’s a nice spot. And people are really happy that they get some service there.”
License to milk
Ann-Marie’s production happens just a few metres from the farm house. First, the sheep are brought into the barn to be milked. “We have to make sure that lambs stay separate from their moms overnight,” says Ann-Marie. “And then when we’re done milking, we let them out here to be together over the day. It’s a home-style system, but it works well. As far as I know, I’m the only one in Iceland with a license to milk sheep.”
Next, Ann-Marie filters and pasteurises the milk, heats it up, and adds different ingredients based on what’s being made. “There are different cultures for the specific cheese I want to make,” she says. “Then I add the rennet, you let the curd happen, and the cheese forms. The whey runs off. And then I have to salt it and brine it. I make a feta-style cheese that I cut and marinate in oil. It’s mainly sold at Christmas markets, because it’s very seasonal, and I have a limited amount of milk.”
Animal-friendly unit shifter
Ann-Marie limits the milking period to May and June, so as not to interfere with the free-range nature of Icelandic sheep farming. “I want the sheep to go up to the mountains,” she says. “It’s the traditional Icelandic way, and I find it so animal friendly. So we limit the milking time to the lambing season. I only get about 400 litres a year.”
With this in mind, Ann-Marie became set on using every product of her process — including the side product of whey. She explains that each litre of milk makes 250g of cheese, with 750g of whey left over. “I was like, I have to use this,” she says, “I searched online, and found you can boil it down into caramel with some sugar and stuff. The caramel gets hard, and I tip it into Belgian chocolate. It’s a lot of hand work.”
The resulting cheese, ice cream, and chocolates have a distinctive, acidic tang. It’s different from the creamy mildness of cows’ milk — and kind of moreish. “The aftertaste is only very slight,” says Ann-Marie. “You don’t notice very much that it’s sheep milk. The difference is really what’s left behind. It’s nerdy, but when you eat cow milk, I find you have a film of the milk left in your mouth. And with the sheep milk you don’t have that. It’s a fresher, lighter taste.”
Keep on milkin’
For now, Ann-Marie’s Sauðagull products are only available at the Hengifoss food truck, and a limited number of shops in East Iceland. She’s dealt with supermarkets in the past, but found it added too much admin. She’s currently working on making pecorino with the help of Nicola, an Italian sheep farmer with connections to the area, who visits from time to time and works on the food truck. She has even visited his sheep farm in Sardinia for inspiration.
Ultimately, Ann-Marie hopes that Sauðagull might inspire more use of sheep milk in Iceland. “I hope it catches on,” she says. “I think the Icelandic sheep deserve a bit more attention. They give you wool, yes — but they can give milk too, with very few resources required. And in a landscape like this, you know, you can have sheep, and not necessarily much else.”
Find out more at saudagull.is, and visit the Hengifoss Food Truck at Hengifoss.
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