ICELAND, LAND OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18242, 28 November 1924, Page 14

ICELAND, LAND OF BOOKS.

Mr Newman Flower gives an interesting glimpse of Iceland and its people in the "Sunday Times." There is not a railway on this island, he says, although it is one-third larger than Ireland; scarcely any roads, but there are few more mentally efficient people in Europe. They study the politics of the world in the minutest detail. One man not only has a library of 5000 vdlumes in Icelandic, and a corresponding equipment of foreign books, but he has every Blue-book sent out from England. In the capital there are only 20,000 people, but they support three daily papers, eight weeklies, and heaven knows how many publishinghouses are pouring out books. Where do these books go? For something like eight months in the year the island is in the dark. The people read. Vast quantities of English, American, and Scandinavian books pour in and are absorbed. They soak up books as a national food.

Ia Iceland behind the regime of the world? In 1930 she will have had a Parliament for one thousand years. A few years ago we began to change our clocks to summer-time; she has been changing hers in summer for a thousand years. The great Icelandic writer, Mr Nordal, showed me a piece of fifteenthcentury manuscript and said: "If I go out into the road and show this manuscript to any boy, he can read it. Can you do that in England?" The language on this lonely island is so pure, hef'records so complete, that to get the history of Scandinavia one must go to the hermit of the Atlantic for it. Her national library contains. 100,000 volumes in her tongue and 20.000 manuscripts, and her language lias . never altered. All European change has left her unchanged, only watching and learning.