In the past, the French brought back fish and woolen knitwear from Iceland. Today, it’s more novels, six of which were published in just one month. On knitwear, the writer Jon Kalman Stefansson has an anecdote. The word for them in Icelandic is “peysa”, because the Breton fishermen who wanted one called out to the sheep breeders: “Peasant!”
If this novelist is published in France, it is thanks to the publisher Jean Mattern. “It started with an invitation from the Icelandic authorities to a literary festival in 2008,” said the latter during a reception at the residence of the Icelandic ambassador in Paris. The editor then attended a public reading given by Jon Kalman Stefansson. My Yellow Submarine (Christian Bourgois editions), published on January 4, his ninth novel translated into French, is one of the great print runs of this literary season: 35,000 copies.
When asked about these novels which spring forth like a geyser, six between January 3 and February 2, the writer replies that his country “arouses people’s curiosity. And it’s been like this for a very, very long time.” My Yellow Submarine tells the story of growing up in Iceland in the 60s and 70s, on an island fascinated by American and British pop culture. According to the long bookstore tour carried out by its author, the French public is just as fond today of this literature from the far north of the Atlantic.
This successful author travels with his wife, also a novelist, the journalist Sigridur Hagalin Björnsdottir, who has just published Eruptions, love and other cataclysms (Gaïa editions). The story of a volcanologist who has an extramarital affair during a national crisis, a volcanic eruption of course. “For a long time, we were only fishermen and shepherds,” she explains. While you were making revolutions, putting on plays, building cathedrals, we were in the cold and telling each other stories.”
But why do they appeal to the French? Whether it’s the thrillers of Arnaldur Indridason (The Pariahs, released February 2), the chilling fictions like those of Thora Hjörleifsdottir (Magma, Thursday) and Eva Björg Ægisdottir (The Snæberg Clan, Friday), or historical novels like this by Hallgrímur Helgason (Sixty kilos of sun, Thursday)…
“French readers simply enjoy reading beautiful stories. Narrative, which is overall very well written,” says translator Éric Boury. He knows this all the better because he has worked on four of the six novels in question. “These are good contemporary stories, which draw on the past: the more or less recent history of Icelandic society but also its ancient cultural heritage.”
This 56-year-old translator is well known in Icelandic literary circles. At the Icelandic ambassador’s house, Jon Kalman Stefansson joked: “My books are better in French (…). The Icelanders are starting to learn French so they can read Eric’s translations.” What is true is that in 2023 France will become the first country, ahead of Germany, for requests for translation assistance from the Center for Icelandic Literature.
“The Icelandic state helps a lot in the distribution of our novels,” underlines the ambassador in Paris, Unnur Orradottir-Ramette, interviewed by AFP. “Interest in Iceland took off with Björk’s music in the 90s. Today, our literature benefits from it. And it amuses me to see Icelandic books displayed in bookstores or read on trains.”
Even the Prime Minister got involved. To promote Reykjavik, the thriller co-written with writer Ragnar Jonasson which appeared in French, Katrin Jakobsdottir spent a day in Paris in October… “privately”.
