Number One in Norway!

The first volume of Hallgrímur’s big trilogy, The Sixty Kilo Saga, is now the biggest selling book in Norway, according to the official Norwegian bestseller list Boklista. Sixty Kilos of Sunshine was published in early January by Kagge Forlag in Oslo and instantly got great reviews in the Norwegian press, four newspapers crowning the novel with the famous six stars, or “six on the cast dice” as they call it in Norway. The book entered at number three on the Boklista, then went up to number two and is now at number one. Norwegian critics and readers have embraced this Icelandic-Norwegian tale of the herring adventure that took place in the beginning of the twentieth century in a remote fjord up in the North of Iceland. After centuries of stagnation Icelandic society hungered for the change that finally came with the Norwegians, when they set up their herring stations and started what became the first industry in Icelandic history, a crucial factor in the economic build-up that followed.