If you live in Europe or follow football (that’s the original version, not the American style) you will have witnessed or read about the epic rise of the small nations during the recent Euro finals. With Iceland slaying the English giants to go through to the quarter finals, and wonderful Wales making the semi finals against all expectations it has definitely been the tournament of the underdog.
But what does this have to do with Icelandic literature?
It appears that we readers take our inspiration from everywhere, and football is no exception.
Well it seems that the meteoric rise to stardom as experienced by the Icelandic football team has begun a ripple of interest in all things Iceland, including Icelandic literature. Egill Örn Jóhannsson told the Guardian newspaper: “With the success and attention Iceland got at the Euros we have felt a significant increase in interest in our authors and works, which is very enjoyable.” The country’s largest publishing house, Forlagið has had enquiries for translation rights and publishing rights to a number of their homegrown authors with queries coming from nations such as America, Tawain and South Korea as well as many European countries.
As an average Forlagið usually publishes between 150 and 200 titles each year with their subjects crossing a wide range of genres, although their star author follows the tradition of Nordic literary successes with crime writer Arnaldur Indriðason, author of the Detective Erlendur series having sold over 12 million books to date.
Iceland has a proud history of writing and for such a small nation there is a high percentage of authors; Jóhannsson said in the interview with The Guardian “There is a saying in Iceland that every Icelander has either written a book or wants to write a book: So yes, the literary scene in Iceland is extremely lively. We get a new Icelandic manuscript on average every day, and that’s just us – there are over 100 publishers active in the Icelandic market every year.” He continued “Our heritage mainly comes from writing, in the Sagas, and we have had a lot of quality writers over the years, including one Nobel prize-winner”. Even Iceland’s presidential candidate is an author; Andri Snær Magnason’s book The Story of The Blue Planet, has been translated into 30 languages so far.
So even if you’re not a fan of football, not European and perhaps completely uninterested in what has been taking place on the pitches of France over the last two weeks, Iceland’s footballing successes in Euro 2016 will have been a positive thing for us readers.
Why?
Well because it means we now have a brand new list of authors and titles that we just have to add to our ever growing ‘To Be Read’ lists.
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