Let us begin with a question: which is the best read country in the world? Recent research revealed that in Iceland more books are written, published and sold per person per year than anywhere else on the planet. On a recent trip there I discovered the average Icelander reads four books per year, while one in ten will publish something in their lifetime.
The reasons for this are multifold: long, dark winter nights, a geographical expansiveness that makes trips to, say, the cinema more difficult, a great selection of well-stocked bookshops and a small population, but perhaps more than anything, it is down to Iceland's most famous literary export, The Sagas.