Future Library: The Norwegian forest that will become an anthology of 100 books in 100 years

Every Wednesday, Alex Johnson delves into a unique collection of titles

Each year a new writer hands over an unpublished text to be stored until 2114 (Channel 4)

Scribbler Moon by Margaret Atwood
From Me Flows What You Call Time by David Mitchell
As my Brow Brushes on the Tunics of Angels or The Drop Tower, the Roller Coaster, the Whirling Cups and Other Instruments of Worship from the Post-industrial Age by Sjón
The Last Taboo by Elif Shafak
Untitled by Han Kang

At the end of Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s hero/ine considers burying his/her poem “The Oak Tree” in the roots of the original tree that inspired it.

As Orlando puts it, this would be returning to the land what it has given her/him.

Books are popular deposits in time capsules. More than 200 works of fiction and hundreds of reference books and textbooks (“authoritative books on every subject of importance known to mankind”) were sealed inside the Crypt of Civilisation at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1940.

What the residents of Earth will make of them when it is opened in May 8113 is anybody’s guess.

However, artist Katie Paterson’s project Framtidsbiblioteket, or Future Library, puts the books centre stage, fusing notions of writing and survival as did Woolf’s Orlando.

Around 1,000 trees have been planted (Katie Paterson/Vimeo)

It aims to examine ecology, environment and the interconnectedness of things, while questioning people’s inclination towards short-term thinking.

So every year, a new writer hands over an unpublished text which is stored in a specially designed room in the Deichmanske Public Library in Oslo until 2114 when they will be made available to the public for the first time and printed as an anthology.

How strange it is to think of my own voice silent by then for a long time suddenly being awakened

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood was the first choice, followed by David Mitchell, then in 2017 Icelandic novelist Sjón, who describes it as “a game played on the grandest of scales”. Elif Sharak was chosen in 2017, and this year Han Kang.

Around 1,000 trees have been planted in the forest of Nordmarka near Oslo to ensure that there will be enough paper to print it. Wood from the forest will also be used to line the special reading room.

Margaret Atwood was the first author to join the project (Getty)

“How strange it is to think of my own voice silent by then for a long time suddenly being awakened,” said Margaret Atwood.

David Mitchell said that when he was first asked to take part he thought it was a mad idea, then that it was “good mad”, and finally that it was quite liberating.

“The project is a vote of confidence that, despite the catastrophist shadows under which we live, the future will still be a brightish place willing and able to complete an artistic endeavour begun by long-dead people a century ago,” he said.

A special ceremony is held in the forest each spring to mark the handover of the author’s text, none of which have been discussed with nor shown to anybody else.

“Future Library is a living, breathing, organic artwork, unfolding over 100 years,” says Katie Paterson. “It will live and breathe through the material growth of the trees. I imagine the tree rings as chapters in a book. The unwritten words, year by year, activated, materialised.”

Keep checking back on futurelibrary.no for updates on the project over the coming decades.

‘A Book of Book Lists’ by Alex Johnson, £7.99, British Library Publishing

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