Iceland honors a 12-year-old Big Mac as the important historical artifact it so clearly is
A look at how one forgotten Big Mac became a treasured piece of Icelandic history
Most Big Macs are disposable things, eaten late at night in an attempt to soak up the liquor sloshing around in someone’s stomach or scarfed thoughtlessly in a car’s driver seat. One Big Mac in Iceland, though, is different. This Big Mac Of Big Macs is revered for its age and wisdom, honored as an artifact of a bygone time.
Atlas Obscura tells the story of a 12-year-old Big Mac in Iceland that belonged to a man named Hjörtur Smárason before traveling the country as a piece of history. He had bought the sandwich in 2009 on the day before McDonald’s trio of Icelandic restaurants closed for good due to the 2008 financial crisis and the increased price of ingredient imports. After putting his order, which included the Big Mac and fries, in a bag and forgetting about it, Smárason rediscovered the food while moving houses in 2012.
He expected to find something horrible in the McDonald’s bag but when he opened it he discovered that “it looked like I bought it just 15 minutes earlier. And the same with the fries, it all looked almost new.” (It’s helpful, at this point in the story, not to think too much about what it is about McDonald’s food that makes this possible. The official story is that the fries and burger just never became moist enough to begin decomposing.)
Since McDonald’s was now gone from his country, Smárason understood that he possessed “a historical artifact that belonged to Iceland.”
“And what do you do with a historical artifact?” he asked. “You put it in a museum.”
The mummified Big Mac and fries were duly given to the National Museum Of Iceland where they continued to age for a year before being passed off to the Bus Hotel Reykjavik and then to the Snotra House hostel, where they live to this day.
The Atlas Obscura article explains why Smárason’s discovery actually matters in Iceland, quoting a professor of anthropology who talks about the importance of symbols like international fast food chains to Iceland’s desire “to establish itself as a Western power after the country gained autonomy from Denmark in 1944.” The old Big Mac, then, brings to mind Iceland’s inclusion in a list of nations considered worthy to have giant yellow arches planted on its soil by a massive corporation.
Even with the fast food chain gone, Smárason’s Big Mac endures, though. Its advanced age and popularity will inevitably, we must assume, lead to Iceland’s tourism industry (which is very good at advertising the benefits of visiting the nation) deciding to build a grand monument to this eternal hamburger, celebrating its milestone birthdays with revellers from all around the world.
For more on the immortal Big Mac, read the full story over at Atlas Obscura.
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