The hundred year books

There is a forest in Norway that will outlive us all. A quiet corner of the world, brewing stories, patiently awaiting an audience that is yet to be born, as trees begin to grow the pages that will bear the fruit of 100 authors in 90 years’ time.

A time when the forest will transform into a library, telling tales that were shaped in the past and bound for the future – that will be, to
an entirely new generation of writers and readers, their present.

And a present it is, this gift of timeless storytelling, this belief in nature and community, this unwavering hope that countries will still remain, forests will still thrive and humanity will still be in love with the art of holding a book in their hands and soaring through the worlds at the tip of their fingers.

This gift – is Future Library.

As do all great ideas and forests, Future Library began as a seed. Planted into the well-watered, sunlit imagination of Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s mind, a result of her week-long cabin stay in the Norwegian wilderness, where nature mingled with her musings, and the embers of what is now Future Library started to burn.

Clearly not all cabins in the woods breed horror story plotlines, but future stories grown from plots of earth where 1,000 newly planted trees in the Nordmarka forest, outside of Oslo have been growing since 2014.

That forest, now a decade old, is destined to become an anthology in the year 2114. Every year until then, an author is commissioned by Katie, Anne Beate Hovind, Chair of the Future Library Trust and other trustees. They deliver a manuscript of any genre – influenced by the themes of imagination and time – unseen and unread by all other eyes than the authors’ own.

Their text is held in trust, homed inside small glass drawers, ensconced in cascading wood panelling – made from trees that were cut down before 1,000 new Norwegian spruce were planted in their place to mark the growth of Future Library – inside what is known as the Silent Room, on the fifth floor inside Oslo’s new Deichman Bjørvika Library.

These stories will not be read by anybody alive today. And that is the very bizarre yet beautiful premise of the entire artwork.

When 2114 arrives, the lush expanse of trees, a hundred years of age, will become the pages of the books inside the Silent Room, published to a new generation of human beings, descendants and dreamers. 1,000 trees into 100 texts for one cohort of future beings – the trees are growing, the texts have been written and the people, they don’t exist yet. But this is all for them.

But before these unborn books are entombed in the Silent Room, a handover ceremony takes place. The giving of the manuscript to the team, accompanied by a host of invited guests, but open and free to everybody; streamed online to those who support the artwork from across the globe.

Future Library’s Anne shared with me some of the happenings of a typical handover ceremony; “Every year is extraordinary, and every year is very small and different. We invite the author to contribute something special, like songs, performances, speakers.”

When the ceremony takes place, that year’s author walks into the Future Library forest and hands their text to the founder, Katie, and The Future Library Trust. Only the title of the text is revealed, nothing more.

For past ceremonies, a selection of unique guests have been invited to be part of them, including Omar Samy Gamal, the City of Oslo’s Vice Mayor for Culture and Sport, any past Future Library authors and, of course, the author for that year.

Anne then told me, “this is a public event. It’s totally open. We don’t regulate who shows up. But quite a lot of people attend, many people travel to come and see it. It’s growing, increasing, it’s become a global project in a way. That’s why we are streaming it. And my personal dream is that people kind of come together and organise groups and reading circles, watch the streaming and be part of it. It is wonderful, it is really wonderful.”

There have been ten ceremonies in total, one for each author who’s participated in Future Library’s first ten years of life. Each writer is a major component, a vital organ surrounding the beating heart of the woods; the works; the everlasting endeavour. But Future Library’s first author? You’ve probably-most-definitely heard of her; Margaret Attwood.

“She immediately said yes,” says Anne. “She got the point from the beginning, and when she’s asked about the Future Library, she says, ‘it’s a hopeful project because we believe there will be people in a hundred years.’” People, a forest, a peaceful country within a peaceful planet full of people who still believe in the written word.

Margaret Attwood often describes it as ‘a practical utopia’, a papery, spruce-studded paradise that promotes a new way of thinking, a better understanding of the possibilities and impossibilities of the relationship between people and planet – one where her contributed novel, Scribbler Moon, is awaiting its awakening.

“[Future Library] is a meditation on the nature of time. It is also a tribute to the written word, the material basis for the transmission of words through time – in this case, paper – and a proposal of writing itself as a time capsule,” said Margaret.

And having taken the rolled up manuscript baton in hand, it has now passed between the ink-stained grip of nine other authors, with the eleventh recently having been revealed as; Tommy Orange.

The authorial list now includes; Margaret Attwood (2014), David Mitchell (2015), Sjón (2016), Elif Shafak (2017), Han Kang (2018), Karl Ove Knausgård (2019), Ocean Vuong (2020), Tsitsi Dangarembga (2021), Judith Schalansky (2022), Valeria Luiselli (2023) and Tommy Orange (2024).

That’s 11 authors thus far, each willing to depart with an entire chunk of their soul and donate it to the future. But many of the authors still to come – the 83rd, the 91st, the final author – are not yet born. Yet they will likely be alive when their books are published. Margaret Attwood, Tommy Orange and those in between – will not. Even the next 20 years’ worth of writers might not be present for the Future Library’s grand opening.

“Imagine if the Future Library had been conceived in 1914, and a hundred authors from all over the world had written a hundred volumes between 1915 and today, unseen until now – what a human highway through time to be a part of,” said 2015’s author, David Mitchell. “Contributing and belonging to a narrative arc longer than your own lifespan is good for your soul.”

Speaking to Anne about this unsettling yet empowering notion, she said, “you know, that’s how life is. Mortality is in our face with this project. I have grandchildren, so I have the same relation with them. I’m going to have to say goodbye to them. And I can’t stand the thought. But this is how it is. What I’m dreaming of is that my grandchildren or great-grandchildren in 2114 are present when everything is published and they’re proud that their grandmother was part of this.”

Future Library emphasises the art of enjoying the process; it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts – not when you’re never going to arrive there. “I’m not even curious.” says Anne, “I’ve accepted the premise that I have to focus on being part of a beautiful, hopeful process. And that makes me really happy. As long as this can inspire people, I can’t dream of anything else.”

After all, don’t we all unconsciously accept our impermanence on this planet every day? We know that in centuries to come, movies will be made that we’ll never get to watch. Technology will be invented that we’ll never try. Concepts, currently unheard of, that we’ll never hear. People we’ll never meet. But we get that. It’s part of the package of being a person. It makes what we do have access to – all the books and songs and forests around us – even more special.

And therein lies its overarching purpose. Already a decade into its century-long journey (through time, not space), Future Library is becoming recognised for its tether to the future. A project planted at the cross section of immortality and mortality, a place where seedlings grow into stories, where manuscripts take a Sleeping Beauty rest and awake in a different time, their time, when their tales are ready to be told. And with this time-spanning endeavour comes a deep-rooted hope, a collective belief that all those involved share (and all those who admire Future Library for everything it is): that books and nature will prevail.

Because tales are as old as time. And trees once occupied most of the space. The longevity of both is already long. Stories are as old as nature itself, both entwined in their ability to keep humanity alive. Before humans even roamed the Earth, forests covered nearly 60% of all land surfaces. Later, some of the earliest evidence of storytelling was found drawn in caves as far back as 30,000 years ago.

Humanity thrives off stories, survives off nature. But there are many obstacles each has had to face in recent times that has threatened both. Screens now fill people’s hands, replacing the clutch of print books, drawing us away from long novels to short-form media, and that same technology is ruining forests. The depletion of natural resources in order to produce them; deforestation, water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions from energy consumption.

In the face of a world where children tuck iPads beneath their arms instead of dog-eared fairytales, with urbanisation increasing by 95 since the turn of the century – there are still innumerable benefits to reading a physical book and exploring the rurality of the greener world. The properties of reading a print book are renowned for their ability to enhance concentration, comprehension, empathy, emotional connection and memory recall. The benefits of nature are still linked to increased respiratory health, lower stress levels, better mental wellbeing and understanding of local communities.

The Future Library’s existence denies the idea that humanity will lose touch with books, or nature, and their unwavering faith is beginning to spread. The City of Oslo has signed a 100-year contract with the Future Library Trust – ensuring that the project will remain in its hands, protected and free to grow – co-signing the belief that there will be that need for it, a century down the line. The Silent Room honours the same agreement.

Described by many as a message in a bottle, the future is a present waiting to be unwrapped, 90 tree rings from now. That’s what people do, isn’t it? Dig their toes into the soil and spin tales around campfires. We’ve done it since the dawn of time, and in the shadows ofthe dusk far before that. To believe in something so wholeheartedly that you’ll never outgrow it, though it will eventually outgrow you – that’s what it means to be human. And the Future Library is how we ensure our humanity lives on forever; in the soil and in our stories, and lykkelig alle sine dager.*

* And they lived happily ever after…

“I will certainly be dead when the Future Library sees its final completion. When I had the idea, I knew instantly it would outlive me (and most of us alive today). It is important that I do not see it fully realised – it is a work conceived for an unknown, future generation. However, it will unfold over this generation and the next, and remarkably, I will spend my whole life crafting this artwork” – Katie Paterson

Image credits:

Banner image – Katie Paterson – Kristin von Hirsch, 2014

Nordmarka forest – Kristin von Hirsch, 2016

Margaret Atwood with Scribbler Moon – Kristin von Hirsch

David Mitchell – Brendan McNeill, 2015

The Silent Room at the Deichman Bjørvika library – Einar Aslaksen