THE CHRISTMAS BOOK WYRM

This wonderful new Christmas legend is currently only available in Icelandic, but will be out next year in English. If you have been learning Icelandic a children's book can be a good way to practise, and I did surprisingly well with reading it, I was very encouraged! 

You will have heard, I am sure, of the festive peril that awaits you should you not be gifted any new clothes for Christmas - Jólakötturinn, or the Yule Cat, will come to devour you! Jólabókaormurinn introduces us to a new story that I think stands a good chance of entering into legend - the Christmas Book Wyrm who will come and eat you if you don't receive a book for Christmas!

You're probably aware of Jólabókaflóð, the Christmas Book Flood - the tradition of gifting books at Christmas in this incredibly literate nation, where allegedly 1 in every 10 people has published a book.

But what happens in this day and age, when book reading is being eschewed by the young particularly, in favour of their phones, tablets, TVs and computer games? The book is set in the not-too-distant future, when two siblings are begging their Amma to tell them the story of the creepy house on the hill... 

It used to be a library and book shop, and the librarian a friendly and helpful man, but as time wore on and books and reading became less popular, things soured. However the Christmas tradition of book gifting remained, but no one actually bothered to read the books. Instead they got used to fill gaps, prop up wobbly tables - even piles of them became furniture themselves!

Teachers at school invited the children to come up with imaginative uses for all these gifted but unread books, and then someone had this marvellous idea - what better on a chilly winter's eve, than to gather the family around a cosy fire and...burn the books.

Light and warmth and comfort! Hygge (Danish and Norwegian for a cozy and comfortable setting) at its best! Everyone thought this was a marvellous idea, bringing families together, using the books, saving money on fuel. 

One day, the siblings began to wonder - 'everyone always buys and gifts books, so the Book Wyrm can't have eaten anyone for positively ages, so it's probably not even a risk any more - what if we just don't bother, and see what happens?'

So they put aside the obviously book-shaped presents, and wait... 

To their horror, the enormous Wyrm comes to their house, climbs their walls, enters the window...and eats them! But inside its mouth they are plunged into a world of colour, adventure and excitement, the search for a missing temple for the girl, and a dog and cat spy story for her brother. 

They wake up the next day safely in their beds, and realise that the Wyrm is not fiendish after all, but wants to share the joy and wonder of imagination and reading with anyone who doesn't receive a book. They know their friends will never believe such a thing, so they have to wait a whole year until Christmas comes around again, before telling all the children that they shouldn't believe this Book Wyrm nonsense, there's no danger, just don't open the books that their parents will inevitably gift them, nothing will happen...

Their pretend scorn convinces the other children to go along with them, and so the Wyrm comes for all of the children and opens their eyes to the wonder of reading, returning them safely to their beds. Village life is invigorated, the library is reinstated and becomes a social hub, and book stores spring up on every street. And the Book Wyrm? No longer needed to open people's eyes, he becomes the new librarian! 

The book has wonderful, fun illustrations and is notable for being in black and white throughout the early part of the book, and only when the children are 'eaten' does colour enter their world, a very effective creative device. 

Although the risk of such a bookish nation ever turning its back on reading is probably quite low, I feel this is a book well placed to become a Christmas classic alongside the other Icelandic festive legends. Of course on a serious note, the threat of smartphones, social media, TikTok, reels, YouTube and the like on attention spans is real, with the added detrimental effect of these things on the Icelandic language, as discussed recently in the Guardian by former PM Katrín Jakobsdóttir & author Ragnar Jónasson.

Their fear is that this beautiful and historic language is in very real danger of dying out within the next generation or two if concerted efforts are not made to protect and ensure its survival. The worry is that the generation growing up now, using English more than Icelandic, will be less likely to ensure that their children speak Icelandic, and this way, in short order, its demise is almost unstoppable...

But I do hope that, unlike the Christmas Book Wyrm, the language is NOT something that will pass into legend.