07/16/2026
In December 2025, a 430-year-old book quietly sold at auction in Norway for 1.3 million krone, around $134,000, the highest price ever paid for a Norwegian book. The buyer wasn't a museum, a collector, or a university. It was a 25-year-old footballer, Erling Haaland, the newest viral sensation.
Manchester City's record-breaking striker, had purchased the only known surviving copy of a 1594 edition of Snorri Sturluson's Sagas of the Kings, the oldest printed history of Norway. Written by an Icelandic poet in the 13th century and translated into Norwegian-Danish for the first time in 1594, it chronicles the lives of Norway's medieval kings, the country's Viking roots, and its conversion to Christianity. There was no printing press in Norway at the time, so it was printed in Copenhagen. The copy the Haalands bought was the only one left in private hands.
Haaland bought it with his father, former Norwegian international Alf-Inge Haaland, and from the start, keeping it was never the plan.
He donated the book to the library in Bryne, the small town in Time Municipality, southwestern Norway, where he grew up and took his first steps in football. His one condition: the book must always be left open so anyone can walk in and read it.
"I want the book to always lie open so that people can read about those who came from where I come from," Haaland said. "It's easier to feel drawn to reading when you can recognize yourself in the people and places being written about."
Then he added "I've never been much of a reader," he admitted. "But books give so many more people the chance to dream big, see new possibilities, and find their own path."
