Literary Iceland Revels In Its Annual 'Christmas Book Flood'

by Jordan G. Teicher -December 25, 2012 - NPR

A shopper browses in a branch of the Icelandic book chain Penninn-Eymundsson.

Courtesy of Bryndís Loftsdottir

A shopper browses in a branch of the Icelandic book chain Penninn-Eymundsson.

Courtesy of Bryndís Loftsdottir

In the United States, popular holiday gifts come and go from year to year. But in Iceland, the best Christmas gift is a book — and it has been that way for decades.
Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country in the world, with five titles published for every 1,000 Icelanders. But what's really unusual is the timing: Historically, a majority of books in Iceland are sold from late September to early November. It's a national tradition, and it has a name: Jolabokaflod, or the "Christmas Book Flood."
"The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday," says Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association. "Normally, we give the presents on the night of the 24th and people spend the night reading. In many ways, it's the backbone of the publishing sector here in Iceland."
A Centuries-Old Literary Culture
Iceland has a long literary history dating to medieval times. Landmarks of world literature, including the Sagas of the Icelanders and the Poetic Edda, are still widely read and translated there, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
Today, Icelandic isn't spoken by many more people than the roughly 319,000 who live in the small country. But in 2009, book loans at the Reykjavík City Library totaled 1.2 million — in a city of only 200,000 people. There's a popular TV show in Iceland, Kiljan, which is devoted entirely to books. And in 2011, Reykjavík was designated a UNESCO City of Literature.
So Icelanders love books. And that love involves most of the population, according to Baldur Bjarnason, a researcher who has written on the Icelandic book industry.
"If you look at book sales distribution in the U.K. and the States, most book sales actually come from a minority of people. Very few people buy lots of books. Everybody else buys one book a year if you're lucky," Bjarnason says. "It's much more widespread in Iceland. Most people buy several books a year."
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