The beautiful Icelandic tradition of giving books on Christmas Eve

CC BY 2.0 Steve Bissonette

Katherine Martinko (@feistyredhair)
Living / Culture
December 21, 2015

Book lovers will want to adopt this lovely holiday tradition, which melds literary and holiday pleasures into a single event.

Icelanders have a beautiful tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading. This custom is so deeply ingrained in the culture that it is the reason for the Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood,” when the majority of books in Iceland are sold between September and December in preparation for Christmas giving.

At this time of year, most households receive an annual free book catalog of new publications called the Bokatidindi. Icelanders pore over the new releases and choose which ones they want to buy, fueling what Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association, describes as “the backbone of the publishing industry.”

"It's like the firing of the guns at the opening of the race," says Baldur Bjarnason, a researcher who has written about the Icelandic book industry. "It's not like this is a catalog that gets put in everybody's mailbox and everybody ignores it. Books get attention here."

The small Nordic island, with a population of only 329,000 people, is extraordinarily literary. They love to read and write. According to a BBC article, “The country has more writers, more books published and more books read, per head, than anywhere else in the world… One in 10 Icelanders will publish [a book].” Read more...http://lifehacker.com/how-to-read-an-entire-book-in-a-single-day-1749070044

In Iceland, a Literary Tour Explores Rich History By DEAN NELSONNOV. 17, 2015

Statues of Hannes Hafstein, foreground, and King Christian IX in Reykjavik. CreditBara Kristinsdottir for The New York Times

Standing in the dark outside the Reykjavik public library in the relentless damp chill that comes with a light rain at 40 degrees, I kept trying to zip up my jacket. The charcoal sky was a shade lighter than the inky ocean a few blocks away, but it was noon, not twilight. I had a few minutes to bundle up before an outdoor walking tour on literary Iceland began. As if on cue, the zipper snapped off in my hand.

I could write here, I thought. There is a constant struggle in this place, often larger than a failed zipper, a theme that inspired the 1,000-year-old Icelandic sagas that touch on the nation’s Norwegian and Irish roots and the mythic tales of elves and trolls.

These days, the country is best known as the backdrop for the myths of our day: films like “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “Interstellar,” “Noah” and “Prometheus.” (Not to mention the TV series “Game of Thrones.”)

But as I talked to people in Reykjavik, the culture of storytelling seemed to be the source of their greatest national pride. The country has a nearly 100 percent literacy rate. Halldor Laxness won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955, and Unesco declared Reykjavik a City of Literature in 2011, only the fifth in the world. Researchers show that at least 90 percent of Icelanders age 16 or older read at least one book a year just for pleasure, and that the gift most requested by children at Christmas time is a book.

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