The Little Book of the Icelanders at Christmas

Christmas in Iceland is special. Ask any Icelander and they will tell you. It is a time of year when everything pulsates with vibrant activity, and the nation delights in those festive traditions that make them a tribe. Music is all around, friends gather, restaurants are filled with people partaking of festive Yuletide offerings, authors are out and about reading from their new works. Everything pulsates with a vibrant, happy energy. There is even a word for the gleeful excitement one feels when waiting for Christmas—jólaskap, literally “Christmas mood”.

In this book, Alda Sigmundsdóttir invites you on a journey of Iceland’s magical Yuletide season, all the way to New Year’s Eve, and beyond. You will learn about the special foods, traditions and customs that makes Christmas in Iceland so special, and meet a colourful cast of characters that are such an integral part of the Yule. In her inimitable style, and using examples from her own life, Alda gives you not only the modern version of Christmas, but also the historical and cultural background to many of that traditions that are still observed today.

Sample from the book:

“Quick question: did you receive this book as a Christmas gift?

If you answered yes, you will have been party to one of the best-loved Icelandic Yule traditions: giving or receiving a book for Christmas. This tradition is so entrenched in Icelandic society that it feels like it must have been around forever. Not so. It began during World War II, when there were strict limitations on imports, though for some reason the restrictions on imported paper were less severe. The Icelanders were flush with affluence at this time—WWII was referred to as the “blessed war” since the British and later American occupation had brought jobs, and therefore money—but they had few things on which to spend their unprecedented wealth.

Except, well, paper. Only, there was not a whole lot you could do with paper, except … print books? Perfect, since the Icelanders were already intensely proud of their literary heritage, associating it with the glory days of the Sagas and Eddas, before the nation was colonized and driven into poverty and humiliation. In no time at all books became extremely popular gifts, and indeed were THE gift to give at Christmas.

This custom has remained, and today Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country in the world, almost all of them in the six-or-so weeks leading up to Christmas. This deluge of books that hits the market at that time is known as jólabókaflóðið, or the Christmas book flood.

Make no mistake: jólabókaflóðið is a big deal. Each year the latest releases receive a massive buzz, in the media and everywhere else—folks discussing which titles are good and which are lame, which are likely to sell and which are not, which book covers are exceptional and which are horrid, which books they can’t wait to read and which they plan to skip. Indeed, one of the most eagerly-awaited publications annually is not a book at all, but rather the yearly Bókatíðindi (Book News) catalogue that lists all titles published in that particular year (provided their publishers have paid for a listing—most do) and which is delivered free to each household in the country. In recent years Bókatíðindi has featured upwards of 600 published titles, though with eBooks and audiobooks added, that number easily exceeds 700 in a given year. Which perhaps does not sound like much in countries with one thousand times Iceland’s population, but when you factor in that Iceland’s population is a mere 350,000 souls, it is a whole lot.”