Morgunblaðið the wrong way round!
Today's back-to-front Morgunblaðið. Photo: Charles Gittins
Readers of the paper version of Morgunblaðið may have had a moment of confusion over their breakfast this morning as they attempted to flick through today's edition. The paper simply will not open, no matter how much one tugs at the right-hand side of the page.
The spine is on the wrong side! What's going on? A printing error? Hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation? Reforms to the Icelandic language bringing it into line with the alphabets of right-to-left-written Arabic and Hebrew?
The attached explanatory note clears things up - well, for those who have been reading the paper version of Morgunblaðið for many years, at any rate. "Today's Morgunblaðið is different from the Morgunblaðið you are used to. The paper has been turned around, beginning on what is usually the back page and ending on the usual front page. This is in honour of those very many Morgunblaðið readers who read the newspaper from back to front for historical reasons," reads the note.
For those wondering what possible historical reasons could induce readers to read a newspaper back to front, the answer lies in how Morgunblaðið used to be laid out. The front page offered big international stories while Icelandic domestic news was at the back. Readers more immediately interested in home news would therefore begin reading at the back and make their way gradually to the world news at the front. Despite changes to the internal structure of the paper since then, the habit of reading Morgunblaðið back to front has stuck with many readers.
The attached notes assures us that things will be the right way round again tomorrow.
