In most countries, the weeks before Christmas are about toys, gadgets and whatever the advertisers are pushing that year. In Iceland, they are about books. Every autumn, Icelandic publishers release a wave of new titles, the country reads the reviews and the bestseller lists like sports results, and on Christmas Eve almost every household unwraps at least one book. Then, as the evening winds down, people get into bed or onto the sofa with their new book, something to drink and perhaps some chocolate, and read.
Icelanders have a word for this season: Jólabókaflóð, usually translated as the Christmas Book Flood (with the definite article it becomes Jólabókaflóðið, “the Christmas book flood”). Over the past decade it has also become one of Iceland’s best-loved cultural exports, copied by readers, bookshops and libraries around the world. This guide covers where the tradition came from, how the book season works in practice, and how to borrow the idea for your own Christmas.
What Does Jólabókaflóð Mean?
The word is a compound of three parts: jól (Christmas, the same root as the English “Yule”), bók (book) and flóð (flood). If you have read our piece on Old Norse, you will recognise how close modern Icelandic still sits to the language of the Vikings, and how readily it builds new words out of old parts instead of borrowing from English.
Strictly speaking, Jólabókaflóð describes the publishing season rather than the act of reading. It refers to the flood of new books that hits Icelandic shops between October and December, because most of the year’s new Icelandic titles are timed to come out before Christmas. The reading on Christmas Eve is what the flood is for.
Where the Christmas Book Flood Came From
A nation of storytellers
Iceland’s love of books runs back to the Middle Ages. The Icelandic sagas, written down in the 13th and 14th centuries, are among the great prose works of medieval Europe, and much of what we know about Norse myth survives because Icelanders copied it onto calfskin. The sagas also give us vivid characters such as Freydís Eiríksdóttir and the Greenland voyages of Leif Erikson and Erik the Red.
Through the long, dark winters of later centuries, farm households practised the kvöldvaka, the “evening wake”, when the family worked at spinning, knitting and mending by lamplight while one person read aloud from sagas, poems or religious texts. Reading was something you did together, through the darkest part of the year. It is not hard to see the line from those farmhouse evenings to a family reading together on Christmas Eve.
War, currency controls and the 1944 catalogue
The modern tradition, though, has a much more practical origin. During the Second World War Iceland imposed strict currency and import controls, and imported goods were hard to come by. Paper was one of the few things that was comparatively easy to get, so books, printed at home, became one of the most practical gifts available.
In 1944, the year Iceland became a fully independent republic, the Icelandic Publishers Association produced the first Bókatíðindi (literally “book news” or “book bulletin”), a catalogue of the new books published in Iceland that year. For decades it has traditionally been delivered free to Icelandic homes in November, and it is now also available online. Families leaf through it, circle titles and argue about who gets what, much as children elsewhere once pored over a toy catalogue. The catalogue’s arrival is, for many Icelanders, the unofficial start of the Christmas season.
How the Book Flood Works Today
The autumn release season
Iceland has a population of around 400,000, yet it publishes a remarkable number of titles every year, and a large share of them come out in the final months of the year. Novels, crime fiction, poetry, memoirs, cookbooks, children’s books and lavish photo books all compete for the same few weeks. Publishers schedule their biggest authors for the season, newspapers and broadcasters run reviews and author interviews, and weekly bestseller lists are followed closely.
Bookshops in Reykjavík stay busy late into December, and books are commonly sold in hardback, which makes them feel like a proper gift. Supermarkets stack piles of new titles next to the Christmas chocolate. It is one of the few places in the world where a new literary novel can be a genuine topic of dinner-table conversation.
Christmas Eve: the main event
As in much of the Nordic region, Christmas in Iceland is celebrated on the evening of 24 December rather than on Christmas Day. At six o’clock, when church bells and the radio broadcast of the evening mass mark the start of Christmas, families sit down to dinner, often smoked lamb (hangikjöt), ptarmigan, or roast pork. Presents are opened after dinner, and there are usually several books among them.
Then comes the part that has made the tradition famous abroad: people retreat with their new books and read, sometimes late into the night. Typical companions are a mug of hot chocolate, a box of chocolates or a glass of jólaöl, the Icelandic Christmas soft drink made by mixing malt drink with orange soda (malt og appelsín). Christmas Day itself is often a slow, quiet day, and many people simply carry on reading.
Books are not the only Christmas tradition in Iceland, of course. Children are still waiting for the thirteen Yule Lads to visit, and the threat of the Yule Cat, who eats anyone who does not receive new clothes for Christmas, is still part of the folklore. A new book and a new pair of socks is, in effect, the safe Icelandic Christmas.
Why Iceland Reads So Much
Iceland regularly appears near the top of international comparisons for books published and read per person, and there is a well-known Icelandic saying, að ganga með bók í maganum, which means “to walk around with a book in your stomach”. It describes the idea that everyone has a book in them, and in Iceland a surprising number of people actually write it. You will often see the claim that one in ten Icelanders will publish a book in their lifetime. It is hard to verify precisely, but it captures how ordinary authorship feels in such a small and literate country.
A few other things help:
- Language protection. Icelandic is spoken by very few people, and books in Icelandic are seen as part of keeping the language alive. Public funding supports writers and translations, and Iceland’s naming laws show how seriously the country takes its language.
- Literary heroes. Halldór Laxness won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955, and his home at Gljúfrasteinn, outside Reykjavík, is now a museum.
- A crime-fiction boom. Writers such as Arnaldur Indriðason and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir are reliable Christmas bestsellers at home and part of the wider Nordic Noir wave abroad.
- Long, dark winters. In late December Reykjavík gets only around four to five hours of daylight. A book under a blanket is a sensible response.
In 2011 Reykjavík was designated a UNESCO City of Literature, the first city with a non-English-speaking tradition to receive the title. If you visit, our guide to the best things to do in Reykjavík covers the city’s bookshops and cultural sites alongside its other highlights.
How to Celebrate Jólabókaflóð at Home
The appeal of the Christmas Book Flood outside Iceland is easy to understand. It is cheap, unhurried and does not involve a screen. Here is how to borrow it:
- Give books on Christmas Eve. Even if your family opens presents on Christmas morning, set aside one book per person to open the night before.
- Make a catalogue. Before Christmas, get each family member to list a few books they would love. It recreates the fun of circling titles in Bókatíðindi.
- Prepare the reading nest. Blankets, candles, warm socks, hot chocolate and good chocolate. For ideas on making a room feel snug, see our guide to creating a hygge home, or the Swedish take on cosiness, mysigt.
- Read something Nordic. Try a classic like Laxness’s Independent People, an Icelandic crime novel, or a pick from our best Scandinavian crime fiction list. For younger readers, see our round-up of Nordic children’s literature.
- Support local bookshops. The tradition is built on a healthy book trade. Buying from an independent bookshop is very much in its spirit.
How It Compares with the Rest of Nordic Christmas
Every Nordic country has its own Christmas Eve rhythm. Swedes gather around the julbord and many watch Donald Duck at three o’clock; Danes and Norwegians dance around the tree; and across Scandinavia, a bowl of porridge is still left out for the nisse or tomte. Iceland shares the Christmas Eve focus but has made reading its signature. Of all the Nordic Christmas customs, it is perhaps the easiest to adopt anywhere.
Final Thoughts
Jólabókaflóð began as a practical solution to wartime shortages and grew into one of the most charming Christmas traditions in the world. It says a lot about Iceland: a small country that treats its language and literature as something worth protecting, and that answers the darkest night of the year with a good story. This December, whether you are in Reykjavík or anywhere else, it is worth trying. Wrap a book, make some hot chocolate, and give yourself a quiet evening to read.
Photo via Pexels.
