Björk Country

Something amazing I just learned: Iceland boasts a literacy rate of 100%!

The country also possesses a thriving literary culture with which I am – I’m ashamed to admit – only superficially acquainted (Halldor Laxness etc).

Here are a couple of books I picked up in Reykjavik – one a history of the rich and ancient ‘sagas’ – colorful dramas that form the roots of Iceland’s literary tradition, and the other a contemporary Icelandic novel.

The first sentence of this mystical tale reads:

“Blue foxes are so curiously like stones that it is a matter for wonder.”

–Sjón, The Blue Fox

Wow.

I’m hooked.