A quick report about last night's opening ceremony, before I dash of to the first day of the world's largest book fair.

This year's guest of honour is Iceland, and the poster for this year's fair, showing an opened book on a rock, features a neat pun: "Sagenhaftes Island", which means both "mythic Iceland" and "fantastic Iceland" in German. Appropriately, the sagas were often brought up by last night's speakers, along with the detective stories, but only one speaker made a volcano shutting down flight in Europe joke. This was inevitably our secretary of state, Guido Westerwelle.

The speeches in short:

Gottfried Honnefelder, president of the book trader union: I can't believe 8% of those idiots in Berlin voted for the pirates' paty whose declared aim it is to get rid of mental property rights. What are our authors supposed to live from? Do something, politicians, before the rest of the country follows suit. Also, Iceland is nifty.

Jürgen Boos, president of the book fair: actually, the internet is cool and even encourages readers. But no touching the properties rights. And hey, I love Iceland.

Petra Roth, Mayor of Frankfurt: I promise to read all those newly translated Icelandic books. Honestly.

Arnaldur Indridason, author: We may be small, but the rest of Europe totally ripped off our sagas. Looking at you, Tolkien, and you, Wagner, and you, unknown author of the Nibelungenlied. Thanks for inviting us and publishing 500 newly translated books of our authors this fall, though.

Gudrun Eva Minervadottir: We don't all believe in elves, though we are noble savages, kind of. Also, we watch so much American tv that I feel like I attended an American high school with cheerleaders and rugby.

(Audience: we think they call it football, though it isn't.)

Gudrun: But that's cool because tv and films are stories, too, and there will always be stories, which we are celebrating. Yay!

Guido Westerwelle: As opposed to all other German speakers, I won't pronounce a single Icelandic name, instead I will just call the "Those Unpronouncable Names". Volcano joke. We'll support Iceland's request to join the EU. Yay Europe. Enough with the doom and gloom already, be proud to be Europeans, people! My speech was now longer than anyone else's.

Olafu Ragnar Grimsson, President of Iceland: Our Vikings already created stories about settling in Iceland when the rest of you was still busy doing boring stuff. Also our island is still growing. Thanks for inviting us! And keep those translations going, we need the cash after the last bank crash.