Every year around Christmastime a meme always circles my social media about a tradition in Iceland: Jólabókaflóð. The meme talks about how every Christmas Eve the people of Iceland give each other books and read by the Christmas tree while drinking hot chocolate. And every year, I see American bookworms talk about how this sounds like heaven. In fact, last year, I gifted my entire family books in an attempt to have a calm Christmas Day where we could spend the entire afternoon reading. It did not work, however, though it did help my family find a few of their favorite books.
However, it is hard to tell if a meme is fully accurate or if it's a made-up tradition Americans fall for year after year due to not actually fact-checking the sentiment. So I decided to research it to see what was fact and what was fiction.
And fascinatingly enough - it is a real tradition! However, it's more complex than we've been led to imagine.
Before getting into the tradition itself, it's important to know about Iceland's history. Iceland has always been a country where literacy is important. As a people they worked hard to tell their stories and histories in their own language, ensuring it would not die out. In the Middle Ages, it was also required by both the church and government for children to learn how to read - and families would teach their children by having a designated storyteller whenever they came together to do chores. Stories are and always have been the lifeblood of Icelandic culture, which would make people assume the Jólabókaflóð would have been around for a long time. However, the tradition itself is less than a century old!
Iceland was in a unique spot during World War II. While they had a hard time importing what typically would have been given as gifts during the war, paper they had in abundance. In fact, they were one of the few places where paper was not rationed, leading the Icelandic Publishers Association to publish the first Bókatíðindi, a catalog sent free to everyone in Iceland with a list of every book published in Icelandic that year. Marketing firms quickly realized books worked perfectly as Christmas presents for a culture with a giant emphasis on storytelling, and as a result, the Jólabókaflóð was born.
To this day, Iceland's publishing industry takes into account Christmas, with 40% of annual book sales happening in the month of December. In addition, one of the major publishing houses indicates that 60% of their yearly turnover happens during the month. For the most part, the book flood will make or break an emerging author's career, if they don't get the sales in December, it will be hard for them to continue writing. But even with their industry being so cutthroat around wintertime, it hasn't stopped the Icelandic people's love of stories. On average, they will read 2.3 books a month, with 1 in 10 people publishing a book in their lifetime.
Now, the one thing I did not find anything about in my research was the idea of everyone reading Christmas Eve with hot chocolate. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something families did, even if it wasn't an official part of the tradition. However, I think what I loved reading about the most was how important literacy is to the people of Iceland, how excited they get over books, and how much they love sharing stories with others. I think if a little bit of this literary magic rubbed off on the rest of the world, it would definitely become a better place.