Bookbinding in Iceland by Einar Sveinn Ragnarsson

Sadly, there are not many sourses about the history of bookbinding in Iceland even though bookbinding has been a great part of some of our biggest treasures. Nevertheless as a 4th generation bookbinder I felt obliged to do some digging and reading up on it when asked to write a short article about bookbinding in Iceland.

Early ages 

It is belived that bookbinding in Iceland began around the year 1000 with connection with Christianity and was maintained alongside translations on religious journals, along with books on law, genealogy and Islendingabok or the Book of Icelanders, which is a historical work dealing with early Icelandic history. The author of the Book of Icelanders was an Icelandic priest, Ari Þorgilsson, working in the early 12th century.

Since there was no printing in Iceland at the time, all books were hand written on parchment and usually bound in soft leather binding since the more modern, German fashion, way of binding wasn’t introduced to us until the late 16th century. 

Even though Gutenberg invented the printing press about 1450 in Germany, the advent of printing in Iceland was even slower than in most places. The first press arrived in the country about 1530, nearly a century after Gutenberg’s breakthrough and was set up in Hólar where a bishop named Guðbrandur Þorláksson later then put it to use to print the Bible among few other smaller books. 

Guðbrand’s Bible took seven years to print and was finally finished in 1584. 500 copies were made and was the first Icelandic language translation of the Bible. This was also a break through times in Icelandic bookbinding since bishop Guðbrandur hired a bookbinder from Hamburg named Jurin to finish the books. Jurin brought with him the tools and materials necessary for his work and tought an Icelandic bookbinder, Jón Arngrímsson, his methods and therefore is the old Icelandic bookbinding style is naturally the contemporary German style where books are bound in leather and presumably with oak boards and decorated with roll stamps.

Of the 500 copies printed, Jurin is believed to have bound half of them himself, and since Iceland was a part of Denmark at the time 120 copies were sent to Copenhagen and the remaining 130 copies were bound by his Icelandic apprentice, Jón Arngrímsson.

This massive project is belived to be some kind of a sensation and may have inspired Icelanders who owned old manuscripts to have them bound or even rebound since there was now access to the necessary tools and knowledge. Therefore there have been many book collectors in Iceland over the years and maybe most mentionable are Brynjólfur Sveinsson and Árni Magnússon who both collected some of Iceland´s most precious books and scripts in the 17th and 18th century but since Iceland was a Danish colony most of those valuables ended up in Denmark and sadly many of them got lost in the massive Copenhagen fire of 1728.  

Further knowledge

Many more print shops opened and therefore a lot more bookbinders were required so naturally the two industries bloomed together because obviously one of the art form couldn’t be without the other.

With improved technology printing and bookbinding got more and more mechanised and nowadays all over the world books are made by machines without a human touch of a bookbinder. What is even worse is that nowadays there are fewer students learning the art of bookbinding by hand or getting the well needed advice from a master in the craft. 

Attendance for a career in Bookbinding has decreased so drastically that sadly it is just a question of time when the Technical College in Reykjavik, where students have been able to study bookbinding, will be forced to cut bookbinding out of their curriculum.  

Although this sounds very pessimistic, we should not despair.  Icelandic bookbinders have throughout the years been diligent to seek out further education, whether by going abroad or to get a teacher to come to Iceland. I sure hope that present and future students will keep on seeking further knowledge that way.

JAM – group

Icelandic bookbinders have been taking part in competitions and exhibitions all over the world since 1900. There was some pause though with the technological changes but only for few decades. Since 1974, Icelandic bookbinders have again participated in competitions and exhibitions across Scandinavia and Europe. 

In 1989 a few bookbinders founded a club that they named JAM. The name was formed from the initials of two Danish binders who came to Iceland to teach in a workshop (Arne Möller Pedersen and Jakob Lund). Since then they have been fairly active and in 1993 two of them participated in an exhibition at the Copenhagen Art Museum, which was celebrated on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Royal Library in Copenhagen. Participation was from most European countries, and it is fair to say that Icelanders did well.

Icelandic bookbinders regularly participate in Nordic bookmaking, a competition which is then shown throughout Scandinavia, but the countries take turns to host the competition. In 2009, Iceland hosted the competition.

Final words

Even though binding books by hands had to give in a bit to technology my hope is that there will always be people that admire the artform of a beautifully bound book. That bookbinders will keep on doing fine art and let the creativity live on. It doesn’t matter how technical and fast the machines will get, they can never make it as beautiful as we can. It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

-Einar Sveinn Ragnarsson.

This article was first written, 2018, for the Design Bookbinders’s December newsletter same year.