Every Icelander has a book in the stomach, "Sérhver Íslendingur hefur bók í maganum".
Iceland has the highest reading, publishing and authoring rate per capita in the world. It,s said that 1 in 10 Icelanders publishes at least one book in his life.
Iceland is undoubtedly an interesting country, and among its most significant aspects is its history, marked by its isolation and its capacity for self-organization as a people in an extremely hostile natural environment. Iceland was discovered in the 9th century and was soon colonized by Nordic Vikings, from whom most of the present population derives. The avatars of the first centuries of the colonization of the island are particularly interesting and, fortunately, we have several historical or literary documents that narrate some of the facts that have happened, so that it,s possible to get an idea of what was in the head of those remote brave men who decided to cross the Atlantic in the Middle Ages, reaching quite north of the west coast of Greenland or even America (Vinland) if we attend the story of the adventures Erik the Red.
Among these documents are the Icelandic sagas, medieval literary documents of the first order which are said to be the first with a formal structure of the novel.
The sense of such narratives is that Iceland at that time (around the year 1000) was a kind of Far West. The island was gradually being populated from Norway, by emigrants as well as by fugitives or deportees, such as Erik the Red. They settled on the island, found farms far from each other. They were governed by a democratic system (their assembly, "ting", is considered the oldest parliament in the world). Culturally lived without apparent problems paganism and an expanding Christianity; for example, Erik the Red was a pagan and his Christian wife.
Adventurers chartered boats to explore or trade with other lands, or to plunder them (Vikings). Honor, courage, and wisdom were appreciated in men. Women were respected and brave too, it doesn,t seem uncommon for them to join the colonization trips.
In Iceland there is little wood and the stone is of poor quality; in Greenland it,s even worse. This made Icelandic art based on the raw material they had at hand: the word. Atrocious climate with long winters tucked away in the house and desolate nature with volcanoes and emanations that seem to come from the same hell usually lead to the need to develop inventiveness to entertain the imprisonment. From there come the best examples of eddica and scandic poetry, and also the sagas, usually due to anonymous authors, although there are exceptions such as the great Snorri Sturluson, famous author of the Heimskringla ("The circle of the world"), a history of kings of Norway that goes back to the mythical struggles of Aces and Vanes.
