How Iceland’s Festive Book Tradition is Embracing a Lockdown Christmas
The Icelandic tradition of Jólabókaflóð — the Christmas Book Flood — has reached near hygge levels of fame over the past few years.
Every winter since 1944, Iceland’s publishing houses have produced a catalogue for the veritable deluge of books published in time for the festive season — Bókatíðindi. It’s delivered to every home in the country and is also accessible online.
2020’s catalogue is 84 pages long. As well as translations of bestsellers from around the world, this year’s Bókatíðindi includes plenty of local works. That’s an easy enough achievement — Iceland boasts the highest number of authors per capita of any country. A reduction in costs for producing locally-written books in 2019 also led to a further boom in Iceland-originated publications.
Amongst this year’s offerings is a biography of Reykjavik-born businessman Jóhannes Einarsson, who helped Luxembourg-based Cargolux become one of the biggest air cargo companies in the world. Jakob F. Ásgeirsson tells his story.
Also set in the capital city is ‘Step on the line’ by Ingvi Þór Kormáksson about a middle-aged man Atli Jón whose wife has left him and now he lives alone with his cat. The mundanity of his life is interrupted when he gets involved with some men involved in some mysterious…
