{"id":287486,"date":"2011-10-10T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/10\/10\/book-sluts-icelandic-culture\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:16:56","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:16:56","slug":"book-sluts-icelandic-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/10\/10\/book-sluts-icelandic-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Sluts [Icelandic Culture]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest article by Amanda DeMarco, editor of Readux: Reading in Berlin<\/a> and contributor to<\/em> Publishing Perspectives. Just so happens that Amanda is in Iceland right now, and totally wanted in on this Icelandic Week project. In addition to this piece, she’s working on at least one more for us, which will run later this week. In the meantime, be sure and check out her site—it’s incredible.<\/em><\/p>\n

Couple quick notes about Icelandic names: Since last names are patronymics—refer to the person’s father, such as Gisla-dottir, or Olafs-son—it’s common practice to refer to someone just by their first name. And in terms of characters, ‘\u00de’ can be replaced with ‘th,’ and ‘\u00f0’ can be replaced by ‘d.’<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt started here actually,\u201d says \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds G\u00edslad\u00f3ttir. She and \u00deorger\u00f0ur E. Sigur\u00f0ard\u00f3ttir are talking with me in Kaffit\u00e1r, Iceland\u2019s largest coffee shop chain, in downtown Reykjavik. It\u2019s a sunny Saturday afternoon and the place is packed with sweater-clad Icelanders chatting over steaming lattes. \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds and \u00deorger\u00f0ur are the founders of Druslub\u00f3kablogg,1<\/a><\/sup> Iceland\u2019s most popular book blog. <\/p>\n

In December of 2008, \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds and \u00deorger\u00f0ur sat down in Kaffit\u00e1r and started talking about blogs. The two had been making radio programs about literature together, and they decided to branch out and do a blog, where they could write about whatever interested them instead of being restricted to an editorial program. Druslub\u00f3kablogg now has fourteen regular writers, all women ranging in age from 25 to 46, who together post one update per day.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe don\u2019t really think of it as criticism,\u201d explains \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds. The plan was always to be open to anything, so you\u2019ll find reviews of chick lit next to literary fiction, recommendations for attractive bookshelves next to postings for readings, and since recently, interviews. Visually it\u2019s a simple blog, though \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds says they\u2019re upgrading to a \u201cfancier\u201d WordPress version soon.<\/p>\n

Druslub\u00f3kablogg<\/a> gets anywhere from 300\u2013400 to 1,500\u20131,600 visits per day. \u201cI think that\u2019s everyone who\u2019s interested in literature,\u201d says \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds, not joking. Considering that there are about 300,000 native speakers of Icelandic worldwide, it comes out to between 0.1% and 0.53% of all people who potentially could read it.<\/p>\n

(It\u2019s worthwhile to note that playing the numbers game in Iceland is a mind-trap for outsiders trying to make comparisons with their home country. The population is so small that it does not scale, so figures should be regarded as a curiosity or a general indication of popularity. The \u2018this would be read by 200,000 people a day if it were in English!\u2019 game doesn\u2019t work.)<\/p>\n

\u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds attributes the site\u2019s popularity to the lack of Icelandic alternatives: \u201cIf you\u2019re interested, there\u2019s not that much out there.\u201d (This is a common form of Icelandic modesty\u2014\u2018Oh it\u2019s so small here, there\u2019s no competition!\u2018\u2014that should be taken with a grain of salt.) The site is read widely by Icelanders abroad looking to stay in touch with book culture at home\u2014there\u2019s a particularly large population in Germany that accounts for a couple hundred visits a week. <\/p>\n

\u00deorger\u00f0ur adds that Icelanders\u2019 unusual proclivity for Facebook helps online projects like Druslub\u00f3kablogg<\/a> really take off: \u201cIceland is one of a kind when it comes to Facebook.\u201d I know, I know, how could anyone be more obsessed than us? According to \u00deorger\u00f0ur, it\u2019s a deeply networked society: \u201cAll of Iceland is on Facebook and everyone is friends with everyone.\u201d <\/p>\n

Druslub\u00f3kablogg<\/a> has gotten big enough that several major Icelandic websites have wanted to host it. But according \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds, the sites haven\u2019t been exactly what they wanted to be associated with: \u201cThe last offer we got was sort of from Iceland\u2019s yellow press.\u201d \u00deorger\u00f0ur adds, \u201cWe have high standards in terms of the environment we\u2019re in. It\u2019s not just about getting more people to read.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the point at which I really realized just how far Icelandic book culture diverged from either the American or German versions I\u2019m used to, how deeply integrated books were into their media. Can you imagine foxnews.com or bild.de absorbing a major literary website? No, no you cannot. \u00deorger\u00f0ur and \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds insist the sites only want their traffic, which I don\u2019t doubt, but the fact that a sleazy news site can covet a lit blog\u2019s traffic is telling in itself. <\/p>\n

As Iceland\u2019s premiere book bloggers, \u00deorger\u00f0ur and \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds have a unique overview of Icelandic publishing culture. I asked them about some trends they\u2019d seen recently. In the wake of the financial crisis that rocked Iceland\u2019s economy in 2008, \u201cthere\u2019s less coming out,\u201d notes \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds.<\/p>\n

But new genres have appeared, says \u00deorger\u00f0ur. Historical fiction based on the Sagas always existed, but \u201cthe trend anyone can see is people are writing suspense, mystery, and crime novels. We take our literature very seriously, so people didn\u2019t write mysteries before. It\u2019s something you just didn\u2019t do.\u201d It\u2019s a shift occurring across the Nordic countries, and one significant enough to be visible to English-speakers via translation. <\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s a significant cultural organ, Druslub\u00f3kablogg<\/a> is just a side interest for both women. \u00deorger\u00f0ur works for a radio station and \u00de\u00f3rd\u00eds is an award-winning poet and Swedish-Icelandic translator. \u201cFor us this blog is a hobby,\u201d says \u00deorger\u00f0ur, \u201cbut we\u2019re always thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

1<\/sup> Druslub\u00f3kablogg means \u201cBook Sluts,\u201d but it actually comes from an Icelandic radio show, not the well-known American book blog of the same name.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a guest article by Amanda DeMarco, editor of Readux: Reading in Berlin and contributor to Publishing Perspectives. Just so happens that Amanda is in Iceland right now, and totally wanted in on this Icelandic Week project. In addition to this piece, she’s working on at least one more for us, which will run […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[39276,43226,43216,42996,1646],"class_list":["post-287486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-amanda-demarco","tag-druslubokablogg","tag-icelandic-culture","tag-icelandic-week","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320066,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287486\/revisions\/320066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}