Children celebrate Öskudagur in fancy dress

Today is Öskudagur, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of lent, a day when children dress up in costumes and go begging for candy.

It's also a day off for all secondary school children who go into town or to the shopping mall to sing in exchange for sweets.  A popular tradition also is "banging the cat out of the barrel," in which a fluffy toy and sweets are placed inside an empty barrel and children take turns in hitting it with a stick until the contents fall out. 

Today is also the beginning of the fast which in Iceland normally meant taking meat of the menu although sometimes dairy products and fish were also abstained from. Deeply religious people would limit their diet to bread and water. The first mention of Ash Wednesday in Iceland is in manuscripts from the 14th century so it can be assumed that the tradition is even older. 

Ash Wednesday derives its names from the practice of blessing ashes made from palm branches and placing them on the heads of participants. In older times in Iceland, young women would place ashes from the stove in small fabric bags which they made. They would then hang these little bags on the clothes of any unwitting boy that they fancied. 

Our photographer captured some of the strange creatures that were out and about this morning in Reykjavik.