A cooking experiment destroyed Dagbjört’s family home

An oil fire during an attempt to make a deep-fried burger destroyed Dagbjört Barringer Gunnarsdóttir’s home in the United States, mbl.is reported. Her son, Óðinn, was 10 months old at the time.

Dagbjört’s husband, Ben Barringer, had found the recipe on TikTok and decided to try it. The fire came after he had recently lost his job, adding to a series of setbacks that contributed to the family’s decision to move back to Iceland. Dagbjört has recently returned with her family after 12 years in the United States.

“There was just an oil fire, and it was August, dry and hot, and the house went up,” she said.

The family lost everything, including Dagbjört’s wedding dress and photographs of Óðinn from his time in intensive care as a newborn. But once they were at a hotel with their son, she said, what mattered most was that they had all survived. Óðinn still had soot under his fingernails, and it took several days before they could bathe him properly.

“Everything was gone, and it didn’t matter,” Dagbjört said. “We didn’t care about any of the stuff that was gone. Nobody died in the fire. It was all right.”

Ben struggled with the fire and found it hard to forgive himself. Dagbjört saw it as an accident and asked him to imagine how he would have felt if she had accidentally started the fire. She knew he would not have blamed her and wanted him to show himself the same understanding.

At the hotel, Dagbjört realised what it meant to have nothing. The family needed a toothbrush, a bottle for their son and pyjamas, so she hurried to a nearby H&M store to buy essentials.

She grabbed clothes for Óðinn, but noticed a security guard watching her. He took the items from her and said he would hold them by the checkout until she was ready to pay. Dagbjört only understood his reaction when she saw herself in a mirror: she was covered in soot, with soot in her hair and tear tracks down her cheeks.

She was then asked to leave the store and returned to the hotel upset. When she told Ben what had happened, he looked at her and asked, “Are you surprised?” They were able to laugh about it together.

The next day, they took Óðinn to an agricultural show to see goats, sheep and giant pumpkins. “You find ways to make things positive and you prioritise,” Dagbjört said, stressing that the most important thing was that the family had escaped the fire unharmed.