The Norwegian world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, has said he wants to prove that “smart is the new sexy” as he prepares to defend his title against Russia’s Sergey Karjakin.

Interest in chess in Norway has skyrocketed since Carlsen, 25, took the title in 2013 by beating India’s Vishy Anand.

The international master Atle Grønn described enthusiasm among Norwegians for the game as “completely crazy”.

“Chess is associated with intelligence, or a narrower activity. Thanks to Magnus Carlsen, it has gained a popular image as well,” he said.

“He has a style that appeals very broadly, which also girls and women in the population find interesting.”

Carlsen, who became a grandmaster in 2004, faces Karjakin in New York this month in a €600,000 (£521,000) match that has been likened to a cold war-era clash between west and east.

Parallels have been drawn with the 1972 world championship match between the American grandmaster Bobby Fischer and the Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky.

The match, which begins on Friday and is due to finish on 30 November, will be shown on primetime Norwegian television, and numerous books have been published on Carlsen and the game.

A Norwegian film about him will be released in New York on 18 November partway through the match.

Despite his popularity, Carlsen has previously said he was bullied at school. “I am in one sense an outcast, because I am very different from the rest of the class,” he said. “It is difficult to be cool when I play chess.”

Having shown he had an eidetic memory as a toddler, Carlsen played in his first tournament aged eight and burst on to the global chess scene in 2004, beating the former world champion Anatoly Karpov and drawing with the Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov described Carlsen as a “super talent” long before he became the first westerner to win the world championship since Fischer, who held the title between 1972 and 1975.

Carlsen, who is a fashion model in his spare time, was included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013.

The Norwegian chess federation said membership grew by 36% after Carlsen’s victory in 2013. Kristoffer Gressli, the federation’s head of communications, said: “The entire Norwegian population in three years has gone from being chess novices to knowing all the chess rules.”