(upbeat music)
- My name is Jared Rydelek.
For nearly a decade,
I have traveled the world in order to document rare fruit.
There are tens of thousands of fruit species in the world,
and I'm on a mission to find them all.
Over the years, I have visited the jungles of Borneo,
the rainforests of the Amazon,
the sprawling markets of India and Madagascar,
all in order to try and find,
and taste fruit that I haven't had.
So why am I in Iceland now?
Have I lost my mind?
(upbeat music)
Iceland is not exactly the first place that comes to mind
when you think of plant diversity.
A recent study showed that only 1.2% of Iceland's landmass
is conducive for growing crops.
Let me repeat that, only 1.2%.
If you do the math that is less than 500 square miles
of arable land in the entire country.
It wasn't always this way,
long ago when Iceland was uninhabited, it had vast forests.
However, when Vikings first settled in Iceland
in the ninth century,
they cut down nearly all the trees for lumber.
Vikings also introduced sheep, which although are adorable,
their constant grazing and their taste for young saplings,
has also contributed to soil erosion.
You can't get too mad at them though, look at that face.
Iceland is also affected by climate change,
harsh winters and a dark season,
where for several months out of the year,
there is little to no sunlight.
Regrowing trees in the country has been an ongoing struggle
that will hopefully be solved in the near future.
But for now, the majority of fruits and vegetables
that you find in Iceland, are imported.
In the past, I've traveled to other Scandinavian countries
in order to document berries,
and Iceland surely has some berries, right?
Well there's good news.
There are several berries that grow in Iceland,
and some of them I haven't had before.
Foraging is a popular pastime in Iceland,
and if you visit during the berry picking season,
you can find entire fields
just completely covered in berries.
These are all crowberries and it's like everywhere,
like all throughout here you see crowberries,
crowberries all over the place.
These I think are bog bilberries,
they're also like all over the place.
But, as you see all those little flowers there,
yeah, it's not the right season.
Yeah, I didn't go during berry season.
Maybe I did lose my mind.
(upbeat music)
As odd as it may seem for a fruit hunter
to visit a place that seems to be fruitless,
you should keep in mind
that Iceland is a country full of contradictions.
Iceland is one of the least populated countries in Europe.
Yet, it's one of the happiest countries on earth.
Much of its population lives a simple life,
centered around horse breeding and fishing.
And yet it's one of the world's wealthiest countries.
And although only 1.2% of its land
is conducive for growing plants,
Iceland has the reputation for being the number one producer
of bananas in all of Europe.
This is an ironic piece of information
that sometimes shows up
on strange fact lists and on quiz shows.
the largest banana producing country in Europe
is Iceland.
(crowd laughs)
- When I heard about this, I didn't believe it.
So I decided to find out for myself.
So come and join me on my adventure
to find the Icelandic banana,
an adventure that starts by taking a look,
into the incredibly unique geography of this country,
That there is an erupting volcano.
Iceland is right on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
which are two tectonic plates coming together. Okay?
So, tectonic plates, if you remember from grade school,
like they go towards each other and they form mountains
and they separate and then magma can come up
from the bottom of the earth.
So magma going up underwater can form island,
And that's actually how Iceland was formed
60 million years ago,
but that activity is still there,
and those two plates are going apart.
And when that happens, this sort of stuff happens.
So there's a lot of geologic activity
under the surface of this country.
So magma comes up fairly often as you see it right there.
And also you get geysers, you get earthquakes,
you get a lot.
And the people of Iceland have found a way
to harness that energy.
(soft music)
It's incredible.
(soft music)
They don't tell you is, this smells and it has a sound
like it looks cool. Yeah,
but the smell in the air is like,
it's a little bit Sulphuric but also burning.
So it smells like a burning egg.
Like you cooked the egg too long on the stove,
and if you get close to it, you hear it cracking.
(wind gushing)
It sounds like a, like a roaring fire.
Oh yeah, that is a scent.
Its getting a bit strong actually.
I should probably get away from this thing.
This is what it looks like.
when it starts raining on a lava field.
Oh my God.
I'm going to stay up here
All these tourists down there are just like
inside a cloud of noxious gas from the earth.
Is that a good idea, guys?
Come on.
I'm going to stay up here for a couple of minutes,
but oh my God, that's incredible looking.
I found some crowberries here that have ripened
maybe because of this business, that's going on over here.
So this lava field has come through and I think maybe
jump-started the growth of these berries,
but then it got too hot and it cooked them.
That's really neat, you can even see up here,
you can see all this, kind of like scorched land here.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Oh, there we go.
They look like they might be bearberries actually.
Yeah, those tastes like bearberries.
They're like slightly sweet, mild, not a whole lot there.
Maybe like a faint, like strawberry flavor.
Just a weird to see them growing here
because they're not supposed to be in season.
It's way too early. Everyone told me there's no chance
I'll find any berries here at all.
But I think because of this lava, that's going on,
they ripen faster. They're getting more warmth here.
I'm not sure, but it's pretty cool.
So I think I've had that before.
It's not the best berry in the world,
but in this kind of setting.
Pretty neat.
(slow tempo music)
Okay. Okay.
So what does this have to do with bananas?
Well, if I'm right and it is the heat
from the volcano that is causing these
berries to ripen faster.
Well then maybe the heat from the earth
could also be used to ripen something
a little bit more tropical.
To grow an Icelandic banana,
you don't just plant a banana seed in a lava field.
This is complicated stuff,
and clearly I don't really know what I'm talking about.
So in order to learn more,
I paid a visit to the Agricultural University of Iceland.
This is the site of the country's largest banana collection.
- So we are standing in front of
what we call the banana house,
from what I know,
the only greenhouse in Iceland producing bananas.
They are not being produced to be sold,
but they were in the beginning,
thought off to be a good trial
to see if Icelanders could create their own bananas,
so they wouldn't have to import them.
Sadly, it didn't continue, but at least they're here.
And also since there are problems somewhere
in other parts of the world,
we are also being able to maintain some varieties in here,
since we're on an island.
Not having the same problem with diseases and pests.
To be able to maintain the temperature,
we are completely dependent on geothermal energy.
- Yeah, it is even warmer.
Whole room has a wonderful scent to it.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Like a floral tropical smell.
- Yeah, it's a bit too realistic
to come in here during the winter time
when you're having maybe a couple of meters of snow
and you're coming in here and you're suddenly
in a different country or world, we have a fig tree here.
And we just usually bring us us figs in the fall.
Yeah, they are being sought after,
because they were quite expensive
when they were being imported.
Yeah, we need to keep an eye on them
if you want to get them
because if people come in here,
- Yeah.
They see the figs, they-
- They will take them?
- Yeah.
- They don't last very long.
- I was very generously given a tour of this facility
and I saw an impressive collection of plants,
monstera, figs, cacao, citrus fruits.
There seemed to be no limit to the plants
that could be successfully grown in Iceland
and then I was shown what I originally came here for.
- You can see the Latin name here and you can see the
Icelandic name here as well, but it's a Cavendish.
So it's a finger banana with small ones,
and they're really sought after because
we let them finish, get to get ripe.
It's a bit different from the ones we buy in the store.
So we have the opportunity to prove the difference between
a fruit that's picked ripe and a fruit
that's picked unripe for importing or exporting.
So it's a completely different experience
for all the senses, I guess.
- There's no pesticides,
and you also said that there is no
artificial light here also.
- No, we have one light here, but as you can see,
it's just off.
It was mostly put up there as work-wise, so.
- I see.
Since there's a dark period in Iceland,
does that have a strong effect on the plants here?
- Yeah, it's absolutely having an effect.
So it's minimizing the possibility of the plant
photosynthesizing at that period because the clusters
here of this, which are being produced by the plants,
are taking up to two years.
in Asia, it's taking maybe one and a half year.
So it's taking much longer,
which tells us obviously that
it doesn't have the same energy.
- However, any of the plants that you've grown here,
they just couldn't have it,
that the darkness has killed them off entirely?
- It can confuse them, you can say so.
Yeah, it can have quite a large effect of course.
- Confuse the plant, but not entirely stop it.
- No, no, no, no.
- That's interesting.
- I think the plant will use every opportunity and chance
try and survive in the end.
So it will wait.
It can have a waiting period.
Well you can see when the light is being increased
naturally they grow on double speed, triple speed.
- Oh really?
So they make up for the lost time.
- Well, They go, they go for it.
These guys, not sure if they'll continue to ripe,
but let me, we can just give this to you.
- Oh, thank you so much.
Okay, great.
So I found a banana that was grown by geothermal energy
and yeah, I guess I could end the video here,
but that would be doing a disservice to the banana
and to the country.
Seeing this collection of tropical plants felt like
I was watching a magic trick, I was impressed,
but now I wanted to see what the secret was behind it.
So let's follow this rabbit hole even further.
(upbeat music)
Had to get my cat into the episode somehow.
Well everybody, I hope you enjoyed part one
in what is going to be a six part series
about my adventure to find the Icelandic banana.
So I found it, but I am not done exploring it.
There's a lot more to talk about,
and part two is going to be about how the earth can be used,
not just to grow food, but also it can be used to cook food.
And that will be, well if it's up now,
there'll be a link on the screen somewhere, click that.
If you don't see the link, that means it's not out yet.
Or I forgot to put it there.
This series was made possible by the support
that I get over on Patreon, so Patreon supporters,
thank you so much.
If you are not on Patreon,
now is a great time to consider it
because I'm going to be putting out a ton of exclusive
content about this series in Iceland. If you go there now,
there is a commentary for this episode that you just watched
as well as the future ones coming out
and a lot of behind the scenes footage.
So check out the link in the description below.
If you'd like to learn more about that.
I also want to thank the agricultural university of iceland
It really made this series special
and there is going to be a lot more from them coming up in the future episodes
If you'd like to learn more about them,there's going to be a link in the description below
as well as other sources that I use to make this episode.
I think this is a really interesting topic.
If you're as interested as I am and you like to learn more,
check out those links in the description below.
Thanks everybody. I will see you in the next one