A practical guide to chopping, stacking and burning wood the Norwegian way, detailing everything from the drying time of a birch tree felled in winter to the correct sharpening of a chainsaw, has caught the imagination of British readers and is setting bestseller lists on fire.

Lars Mytting’s Norwegian Wood combines both eminently practical information about tree types and wood-stacking methods (the Norwegian Sun-Wall Woodpile, for example, is “a real classic – where regulations permit it”) with a history of the practice, and personal stories from the Norwegians who spend months preparing for their frigid winters.

“Liv Kristin and Peder Brenden, from Brumunddal, build classic cord stacks with 24-inch logs. Peder handles the chain saw and Liv … does the splitting and stacking, usually in the mornings, after mucking out the cattle,” writes Mytting by an image of the pair. Another log pile “was made by Arthur Tørisen, formerly a postmaster at Kvam, in Gudbrandsdal, when he was 76”, he writes. “New heights of artistry are possible if you combine chunky and finely chopped logs with unsplit branches.”

Published in Robert Ferguson’s English translation in October, Norwegian Wood soared to No 2 on Amazon’s UK bestseller chart later that month, ahead of Jamie Oliver’s latest cookbook. Independent publisher MacLehose Press has rushed through four reprints to keep up with demand.More than 20,000 copies have already sold in the UK. Published in 2011 in Norway as Hel Ved (Solid Wood, an expression referring to a person’s good character), the book has sold 300,000 copies internationally, and is translated into 10 languages.

‘Completely gripping’ ... a Swedish Gränsfors American Felling Axe, pictured in Norwegian Wood. Photograph: Lars Mytting/PR

“We’ll have 60,000 in print by Christmas,” said editor Katharina Bielenberg at MacLehose. “It has completely exceeded all our expectations. It’s a book which makes people smile … and even though it’s quite a detailed DIY manual, people sit and read it cover to cover – they find it completely gripping.”

Mytting remains astonished by its performance. “I think if I had known the sales potential of it, and the success it would have, I wouldn’t be finished writing it yet,” he said. “But without anyone knowing, the time was right for it.”

Mytting described the book as “both a useful how-to guide, and a tale from a cold country … a non-fiction book carrying with it the dream and the ambience of being self-sufficient … in your own cabin”. It appears, he says, to be appealing to “the armchair woodchopper” as well as enthusiasts.

Snippets of wisdom about what you can tell about a person from his woodpile (“low pile: Cautious man, could be shy or weak”) to how in Norway, “discussions on the vexed question of whether logs should be stacked with the bark facing up or down have marred many a christening and spoiled many a wedding when wood enthusiasts are among the guests”, are also included.

A Norwegian television programme based on the book that aired in 2013 was followed by a six-hour programme showing nothing but an open fire in a hut. One million people tuned in during the course of the show. “People actually followed it,” said Mytting. “They’d comment on Twitter ‘time to get on a new log’, or complained ‘when will they burn spruce? There’s too much birch now’. There was no end to the detail.”

At Waterstones, non-fiction buyer Bea Carvalho said Norwegian Wood’s unexpected success was “thoroughly deserved”.

“It’s a pleasingly unusual and very special book which celebrates our relationship with nature through the ancient practice of woodchopping and stacking,” she said. “We see it as a key gifting title this Christmas.”

According to Carvalho, “publishing in the nature genre has been particularly strong recently, and books that celebrate rural practices of working with the land are proving especially popular. The Shepherd’s Life, James Rebanks’s love-letter to farming life in the Lake District, for example, has been so successful that it has made the shortlist for this year’s Waterstones Book of the Year.”

Chopping and stacking wood, Mytting believes, “is a very healthy thing to do for a modern person”. “So much of our life is based on a digital lifestyle. Chopping wood is so extremely different,” he said. “It’s a hands-on experience, which is only you, with simple tools, and very organic material – old trees that have spent up to 200 years growing, that are heavy and stout and really give you resistance when you chop them. It gives you a reward that is exactly equal to the effort you put into it.”