The 'Super Scooby' burger, Britain's largest and most fattening burger with an artery-busting 2,645 calories, pictured next to a MacDonalds Big Mac burger (right). Photo: VCG

A decade after McDonald's shut down in Iceland, thousands of online users follow the live slow decay of the last order - a seemingly indestructible burger with a side of fries protected in a glass case like a precious gem.

The American chain closed its only three branches in Iceland during the subarctic island's financial crisis in 2009, making it one of the only Western countries without a McDonald's.

On October 31 of that year, just before the restaurant's closure, Hjortur Smarason bought a menu for conservation.

"I decided to buy a last meal for its historical value since McDonald's were closing down," Smarason, who is a manager for a space tourism company, told AFP on Wednesday.

"I had heard that McDonald's never decomposed so I just wanted to see if it was true or not."

He first kept the meal in his garage but then lent it to the National Museum of Iceland, after which it was moved to a hotel in the capital Reykjavik for a while.

Now the burger is on display like a work of art inside a glass case at Snotra House, a hostel in Thykkvibaer in southern Iceland.

"People from around the world... come here just to visit the burger," Sigurdur Gylfason, owner of the establishment, told AFP. 

The hotel claims it receives up to 400,000 hits daily.