This is a room full of books, but is it a book shop?

Last Saturday I went to a bookshop on Hverfisgata that I’d been told about, with my German friend from Icelandic lessons. It was incredible, like no other bookshop I’ve ever been in before. There is a television programme here on Wednesdays called "Kiljan", which means "The Paperback", and is also the adopted middle name of Halldór Kiljan Laxness, my favourite author and to some extent still the literary darling of Iceland. Even though he was somewhat controversial during his lifetime, he remains the only Icelander to have won a Nobel Prize, which sort of makes his position as king of twentieth-century Icelandic literature unassailable. It is a programme about books and literature, as you have probably guessed, and every week there is a feature called "Rykkornið", meaning "the speck of dust", in which the presenter goes to talk to the owner of this book shop about some old books. The bookshop-owner, Bragi Kristjónsson, always takes snuff during this short interview, and by all accounts is slightly eccentric.

We didn't actually see him when we went to his shop - in fact there didn't appear to be any staff there at all, which would probably have made it quite difficult to actually buy a book. But lack of staff was not as much of a problem as the sheer impossibility of finding anything that you might be looking for. There was a system of sorts, but mostly it was like being in someone's attic. 

 

 

This, I presume, is the place where you are supposed to pay for your books. As you can see, it is unmanned. And quite cluttered.

I loved it, but I wouldn't advise anyone to go in with a specific book in mind... it's more of a browsing experience.