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I start getting nervous before I even get to Iceland. “One second with rotten shark in your mouth is an experience you will never forget - no matter how hard you try” says the in-flight mag. I steel myself.

For centuries, Iceland has marked the old Norse midwinter month of Thorri with a feast of traditional foods - Thorramatur - as scary as any Viking raiding party. Like the chill panoramas and sulphurous outpourings of the island itself, the dishes tend to the cold with dashes of pungency.

Fish and sheep were the Icelanders’ mainstays then as now, and food preservation for the long cold months relied on using the elements allied with the sort of “nose to tail” eating fans of London restaurant St John would admire.

Lamb was smoked over birch (hangikjot), minced sheep liver was used for a haggis-like pudding (lifrarpylsa), ram’s testicles (hrutspungar) were pickled and jellied, while the sheep‘s head (svio) was singed to removed the hair then boiled to be served cold.

Haddock and catfish, meanwhile, were wind-dried to pale chewiness (hardfiskur) by Arctic gales, and the infamous Greenland shark (hakarl) was buried in sand for months so decomposition could both soften the meat and extract toxic ammonia from it.

And this isn’t just history - go into any Icelandic food store and it’s there, daring you.

Naustid has been Iceland’s most famous traditional restaurant for 50 years, a stone’s throw from the Reykjavik harbour quayside. The interior, wrapped in dark wood planks, echoes a Viking longship. In the sepia lighting, its Thorramatur buffet looks harmless enough - until you spot the sheep’s heads.

I eat with Naustid’s manager Jon Orn Jonsson, who shows no mercy. “We start with the shark,“ he says, proffering a plate of innocuous-looking cubes of fish alongside the traditional accompaniment, the local Brennivin potato and caraway schnapps known as Black Death. “People say the shark is awful, the schnapps is awful, but together they’re good,” he tells me.

Rotten shark hits you first with a strange smoky fishiness that’s at least bearable if not exactly what you’d call moreish. Then, as I chew (and God this stuff is chewy), a blast of ammonial gas brings tears to my eyes, which hasty gulps of the Black Death only worsen. As I weep, Jon Orn tells me how the best hakarl on the island comes from a farmer known as Siggi The Shark. “He is a strange man, with a big nose. You can tell he has been through a lot,” says Jon Orn. “And he takes snuff - probably so he can‘t smell the shark.”

Having survived shark attack, it’s nothing to slice bits off the sheep’s head, almost enjoying the tongue, before gnawing on dried fish moistened a little with a spread of butter. The first bite of jellied ram’s testicles, tbough, brings instant defeat. As I spit out the sour mouthful, I reach again for the Black Death, and eye up the Icelandic roast lamb that’s also on the buffet.

While Thorramatur may appeal most to people who see eating as extreme sport - deadly fugu sushi followed by pan-fried grasshopper perhaps - Iceland thankfully has plenty anyone can savour.

Near the water’s edge in the tiny south coast town of Stokkseyri, 40 minutes drive from Reykjavik, Vid Fjorubordid (“By The Sea”) specialises in serving some of the best lobster on earth. Huge bowls of succulent tails come bathed in garlicky butter, alongside couscous for the juices and superb salad lifted by pickled cucumber, dill and red peppercorns. We heap discarded shells into little tin buckets, wipe our hands and mouths and crunch back outside through deep snow as a green shimmer of Northern Lights flickers overhead.

The next day, we work up an appetite with an exhilirating 4x4 cross-country tour of the southwest corner of the island (the “Golden Circle“). The site of the world’s oldest parliament between river and cliffs at Thingvellir is as evocative in the 10am pre-dawn twilight as when Lawspeakers first gave judgement here in 930AD (three centuries before Westminster), while a lunch of classic Icelandic lamb soup warms the soul as much as the body when you’re overlooking the surreal majesty of the part-frozen Gullfoss waterfall. We admire geyser eruptions, gaze into volcanic crater lakes where summer concerts are held, then pass an hour racing skiddoos across the snowdrifts, an adrenaline rush that leaves us breathless for dinner.

Prir Frakkar is a Reykjavik favourite, an old-fashioned dining room near the towering modernist Hallgrimskirkja church that is the city’s most prominent landmark. Under the gaze of various stuffed animals, I taste whale that turns out to be like the finest beef, as tender as its ethics are tough. Raw smoked puffin is less startling but halibut, like all the fish, is so good you’re almost happy paying £25 plus for a main course.

Iceland is worth it. The coldest snap for two decades has draped the island in a deep white overcoat, the Northern Lights burn drifting curtains of colour onto clear nights, and Reykjavik hangouts like hip newcomer Sirkus or Kaffibarin (part-owned by Blur’s Damon Albarn, which explains the London Underground sign) are just two good spots to sup £5 beer.

And you don’t have to try rotten shark and Black Death. But do you really want to say you passed up the chance?

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