Northland Public Library project inspires Icelanders

A cool connection happened recently between the Northland Public Library and a library in Iceland, thanks to a house made of books and an overseas summer reading program.

Nicolas Yon, Northland communications director, received an email in February from a librarian at the Bókasafn Vestmannaeyja.

The email read:

Hi —

I’m a librarian at a library in Westman Islands on the south coast of Iceland. Every year we have a summer reading club for kids. We always have a theme and this year we will have “Super Hero Reader” theme. We are going to make up a story about a couple of super hero kids and their super power is reading. We want to build a house for them to live in and we found a picture that we think is from your Library.

Do you happen to have blueprints or instructions on how you made this, that you could share?

Best regards

Drífa Þöll, librarian

The photo Drífa and her fellow staff found was of a small house at Northland Public Library made entirely out of books. It was created as part of an Eagle Scout Project in 2012 by Curtis Coltharp of Bradford Woods, Yon said. The house sat in Northland’s children’s and youth section on the first floor of the library.

Yon responded right away to the Iceland librarian. He then reached out to NPL staff for more information on the book house and provided the librarian with images of the house plus graphics on NPL’s 2023 summer reading program, “Super Power Summer at Northland.”

‘Reading heroes must live somewhere’

Drífa said that the Iceland library teamed up with an Icelandic educational institution that provided them with a reading challenge, which also is a board game with a theme of reading heroes. That prompted them to search for ideas, as they like to “outdo” themselves every year with decorations, according to the librarian.

“We just Googled stuff to figure out what to make, and then we found a picture of Northland Public Library’s book house and decided we wanted to make one,” Drífa said. “Reading heroes must live somewhere, right? A book house is a perfect place for them.”

After emailing Northland, Drífa said, “I wasn’t sure I would get a reply, but I was thrilled when I opened my email a few days later.”

The house was at Northland for some time before it went to the Ross Township Community Center for a few years, but it since has been retired, Yon said. So photos were the only information to share.

“We had to figure out a way to do this ourselves,” Drífa said. “My colleague Viktor Pétur Jónsson gets the credit of the design, but most of us librarians did various work on the house, painting, putting up page-wallpaper, stacking the books for the walls and so on. So three months later, the house has been built and our patrons love it, no matter how old they are.”

‘Largest puffin colony in the world’

They sent an email to Yon and Northland in May to thank them for their help and inspiration.

“It was certainly wonderful, and super fun, to receive an email from a library in a remote location in Iceland, and one that was interested in a project at Northland,” Yon said. “At the same time, libraries take a collaborative approach with an emphasis on sharing resources, ideas, materials as a way to serve our communities and our mission, no matter if we’re down the street or across the world,”

Vestmannaeyjar, or the Westman Islands, is an archipelago of about 15 islands, and they live on the only inhabited one called Heimaey, of Home island, Drífa explained. About 4,600 people live there, and most work in the fish industry.

“Our claim to fame is that we have the largest puffin colony in the world, and a volcanic eruption that happened in 1973 on our island and all of the 5,600 inhabitants had to evacuate,” Drífa said. “The eruption lasted for six months and about 400 houses went under lava. Soon after the eruption, the town was dug up from under ash and pumice, and people started to move back home.”

And even a remote small fishing town in Iceland can find similarities with Americans about reading.

“We believe our libraries are important. Icelanders boast about being a nation that reads, even though interest in reading seems to have gone down in the last years, probably like everywhere else in the world with all the technology getting a lot of attention in our lives,” Drífa said. “In Iceland most of the books published come out before Christmas, (but it) has changed a bit in the last decade or so, and we call it the Christmas book flood. Books are considered a great gift.”

She said they work with the local school to promote reading. Thanks to the Iceland library manager Kári Bjarnason, they were able to bring back the summer reading program.

“He, and us, want the library to be an active part of the community filled with life and joy, not just a place where books collect dust,” Drífa said.

Yon said it was exciting to receive communications from another part of the world, but it’s typical of a library’s dedication.

“I think that demonstrates the power of libraries and the impact they have on communities large and small. Even a remote archipelago in Iceland,” he said, “sees the power and need for a library.”

The connection could spawn ideas for some new books, too.

“It reminded me that Northland has an ever-expanding world languages collection for both children and adult materials, so perhaps we’ll add some Icelandic books,” Yon said.