In an interview on Education and Society

So why did you decide to conclude your reading list with this Icelandic novel, Independent People?

Here are five books with something to say, not just about education but about people – all five make us realise how different our societies are from how they were. Independent People is the book that has just bowled me over in the last couple of years, more than anything else I’ve read. It is incredibly moving, about a poor Icelandic farmer who does not want to be dependent on anyone for anything. And that is his overriding value – a very classic value of small, self-supporting peasant farmers. They have this integrity and courage as well as this drive to independence. It is set in Iceland at a time when it was much poorer. The country has had a miserable history in many ways, but it’s not really about that. The book is great because of the author’s ability to create a world utterly different from ours, with a value system so different but also so totally human. I don’t know why he is not better known – he clearly is not obscure, he did win the Nobel Prize. But why hasn’t the whole of Britain read him? It is long, though – Independent People is for when you have a large chunk of time.

A true Nordic saga?

Yes, and I suppose there is an education theme here – the main character is a poet as well as a farmer. In most societies that do well there does tend to be a history of people being educated. And it is often either because they were great Bible readers or, as in the case of Iceland, there is this ongoing literary tradition of the sagas. Many societies have had oral poets. I know I’m notorious now for saying that you don’t grow an economy just by upping your education spending, but I don’t mean to suggest that education doesn’t matter. It matters enormously, but it’s in a much more subtle way. So if you want to find some social lesson here, what the novel does bring home to you is that the Nordic countries, which now are seen as such an enormous success across the world, also have this very distinctive past in terms of religion and literacy.