Studia Islandica - 01.06.1976, Síða 139

SUMMARY
This work is a study of how society appears in Icelandic children’s
books. The author studied all children’s novels by Icelandic authors
published between 1960 and 1971, both new books and new editions
of older books, 159 books in all. A question forxn for each hook asked
amongst others the following questions: environment and period of
action (chapter 4), social class of main characters, occupation of father
and/or mother, economic circumstances (chapter 5), home, personal
problems (chapter 6), school, education and future plans (chapter 7),
sex roles and attitude to the sexes (chapter 9), violence and brutality
(chapter 12), attitude towards Iceland and other nationalities and
races (chapter 13).
Of course most of the books mentioned only a few of these issues,
but almost all the books gave some idea of the two major questions.
environment and class, which take up most room in the study.
Up till the second world war the great inajority of Icelanders lived
in the countryside, on farms and in small villages along the coastline.
This situation changed quite abruptly between 1940 and 1950 when
lots of people moved to the south-west comer of the island. In the
latter half of the 20th century almost half of Iceland’s population
lives in or near the capital, Reykjavík, and in 1970 almost 60% of the
inhabitants lived in Reykjavík and other towns with a population of
10.000 or more. This major change in the Icelandic way of life is not
very apparent in the children’s books where the countryside is the
main setting for almost 75% of the books. Some of this is due to the
fact that about 40% of the stories take place before the middle of the
century, but also about 64% of the stories set after 1950 take place in
the country (4.1).1
It follows that the middle class with a predominance of well-to-do
farmers is the leading class in the books. The upper class which con-
sists mainly of professional people comes next, leaving the working
class to bring up the rear with only about 17% of the main characters
(5.1).
The books depict prosperity and happiness in the middle and upper
class homes. Divorce and juvenile delinquancy are practically un-
1 Numbers in brackets refer to chapters in the study itself.