Ironically, the man who sent Sigvat on his errand in the first place, the Christian King Olav, was in some respects an elf himself. Though Olav denied even the possibility, a few of his followers believed him to be the reincarnation of an earlier king, Olav Geirstader, who, upon his death and laying “in howe” (i.e., in his grave mound), received both offerings and the epithet of álf, or “elf,” after his name. It is also interesting to note that Hov lay just to the east of the limits of a kingdom still known in the early Middle Ages as Álfheim. Scholars argue that the name has nothing to do with elves but refers instead to the bed of gravel that lies beneath the tillable soil of this district, a fact that Tolkien fans will quickly forget when they hear that, in the ninth century, Álfheim was ruled by a king named Gandálf. According to one of the Fornaldar Sagas, or “Sagas of Ancient Days,” the inhabitants of this earthly Álfheim were so fair of face that only the risir outshone them. As to who the risir were, I suppose that is another story.
Like Christmas Itself
You probably have to clean house before Thanksgiving anyway, so why not host your own Álfablót this year? (Elves, like most Christmas spirits, love a clean house.) As witnessed at Hov, the door need not be opened to anyone outside the family—anyone living, that is—so you won’t have to do much shopping or decorating. Now, the question to ask is: How would the elves wish to be fêted?
If you are already following a Norse or Saxon Pagan path, you may be able to commune with the elves and ask them yourself. The rest of us must turn to the old tales for clues. One of the most helpful is the Norwegian fairy tale “The Finn King’s Daughter.” Here we have a Finnish princess playing the starring role in a Norwegian story whose roots have been traced back to Jutland in Denmark, a pan-Scandinavian folktale if ever there was one.6 All that’s missing is the Swedish element, but I say the Swedes missed the chance to put in their two kronor when they shut the door in Sigvat’s face back in 1017.
Although she is not identified as an elf in the tale as it was collected by Rikard Berge in 1900, the Finn King’s daughter bears such a close resemblance to the Álfar that she must once have been one. Here are the bare bones of the story:
Before going off to war, the Finn King encloses his beloved daughter inside a mound, mostly because he’s caught her exchanging glances with the new serving boy. When the princess and her nine handmaidens are well and truly shut up in their well-appointed house of earth, the king departs, never to return. The princess and her maids begin at once to try to dig their way out. The effort takes nine years and the life of each of her maids. At last, the princess claws her way out into the now unfamiliar countryside. While she is rambling round the forest, lost, the king’s men finally return to the mound to release her, the Finn King himself having died of sickness. They find nothing except, presumably, the bones of her handmaidens.
After a search of the kingdom turns up no princess, a troll woman presents herself at the Finn King’s hall and claims to be the missing girl. She immediately starts planning her wedding to the serving boy, who, by this time, has revealed himself as an exiled prince—of course!—and, having earlier earned the Finn King’s deathbed blessing, has taken up residence in the hall. He goes along with the wedding plans (People change, don’t they? And this girl had been in a mound for nine years!), but he is clearly not looking forward to the upcoming nuptials.
At last, the real princess emerges from the forest, chilblained and emaciated. Rather than declare her true identity, she takes a job as a maid at her old home and helps the troll woman to pass a series of tests by which the prince is hoping to expose her as an impostor. We are not told why the real princess lets it drag on for so long, but eventually the troll woman is tripped up by an incident involving a pair of gloves, and the Finn King’s daughter takes her proper place at the prince’s side.
Those are the bare bones; the elvishness emerges in the details of the story. Unlike the trollish impostor who can barely thread a needle, our plucky princess is a whiz at sewing and the textile arts, both elvish traits in nineteenth-century folklore—think of “Rumpelstiltskin” and “The Shoemaker and the Elves.” She’s also good with the horses, like the Scandinavian household sprites who mucked out the stables and braided the horses’ manes.
Elves were believed to dwell in mounds, and it was to these mounds that mortals went to offer sacrifice. In the opening of “The Finn King’s Daughter,” the father stocks the mound with “food and drink, clothing and cups and vessels.” The poor girls are going to need all these things, of course, but these are also exactly the sorts of gifts that were laid with the dead in howe in pagan days. (Celtic fairies and brownies were highly offended by gifts of clothing, but their Nordic counterparts expected them.) Other than these basic provisions, the Finn King does not take into account any practical considerations such as a conduit for fresh air or waste disposal system. And would it not have been simpler and far more humane for him to have appointed a guardian to look after his daughter in his absence? Could he not have sent her to stay with relatives or at the very least have banished the serving boy? The answer is no, because practical considerations are for the living, and as soon as she enters the mound, the princess enters the elvish realm: the realm of the dead.
So there they are, the princess and her nine doomed handmaidens, without door or smoke hole such as Gardner’s euhemeristic pixies enjoyed. They blink at one another in panic as, within, the candlelight glances off the silver cups and plates and, without, the last shovelfuls of clay are tamped down above their heads. Those nine years inside the mound must have seemed like a lifetime to the princess, and when she finally scrabbles her way out, it really does seem like a lifetime or more has passed. Even before he departed, the Finn King had ordered the mound leveled—suggesting that the “living” space was very deep inside the earth—and sown over with grass. By the time the princess breaks out, the forest has taken over the razed site, obliterating all familiar features of the landscape. Like Rip Van Winkle, she recognizes no one at her old home, with the exception of the former serving boy, and no one recognizes her. Our princess is not simply a lost daughter; she is one of the mighty dead, coming home to a world much changed. Toward the end of the tale, she and her prince enjoy a church wedding, so it is obviously a Christian world to which she has returned. Originally, she would have been a heathen princess, most likely also a priestess, buried along with a sacred number of her servants and the finest of her worldly goods and ritual paraphernalia.
But where was our princess all that time the Finn King’s men were scouring the forest for her? It turns out she was attending a sort of Álfablót. Devastated and disoriented, she is taken in for a time by a party of charcoal burners. This is the first human company she has had since her last handmaiden died. The charcoal burners offer her a bed inside their leafy shelter, a bowl of rabbit stew, and a seat close by the fire. The story tells us, “It seemed like Christmas itself to her after what she had been through.”7 What did they talk about there in the firelight? Conversation would not have been easy, for the princess’s courtly speech was probably no more closely related to the deep woodsmen’s jargon than the language of the light elves was to that of the dark elves. What mattered was the treatment she received.
Heat, light, food, and a human welcome: keep these in mind if you want to host the Álfar. Schedule your “Christmas for the Elves” somewhere in that empty stretch of time between Halloween and Martinmas (November 11), or even between Martinmas and Thanksgiving, so they won’t have to share their special day. The elves are bearers of light, so if you cannot manage a full moon for your feast, a waxing crescent is better than a waning three-quarter moon. Just as the princess had to claw her way out of the earth, wander the forest barefoot, and cross a river on the back of a wolf, your guests will have completed a long and arduous journey. They have left their usual haunts and howes in order to join you, so greet them warmly. I suggest the following: “Let them come who wish
to come, and let them go who wish to go, and do no harm to me or mine.”8 Once you have issued this invitation, I would advise you not to address the elves directly.
You don’t know how far some of them may have come in space or time, so it’s a good idea to turn off the television and most electric lights, which the oldest of the company may find glaring. If you have a fireplace, make a fire. Otherwise, light plenty of candles. Set the table with your best dishes but offer simple foods: bread, meat, milk. If you are very lucky, you will get some dísir along with the Álfar. These ladies may be expecting a reddened altar, so now would be the time to bring out that blood-red Christmas tablecloth or runner. Feel free to talk and laugh with any living company—it’s a party, after all—but keep in mind that it is all done in honor of the elves. Don’t be a Hovian; leave the door ajar for the duration of the feast, and don’t be surprised if you see a few familiar faces shining out from the shadows.
Craft: Elvish Window Ornament
Because we know so little about it, Álfablót is a feast that is open to interpretation. If you’ve already hosted the dead at Halloween, you may choose this occasion to celebrate the solar aspect of the light elves. The following craft is meant to be displayed in the window, where it will filter the light of the sun.
Tools and materials:
2 flimsy, plain white paper plates
Plain white paper, the thinner the better
Colored pencils and/or markers
Glue
Scissors
X-Acto or other craft knife
String
Cut out the centers of both your paper plates. Trace one of these cut-out circles on your plain white paper. Draw the face of the sun or moon inside the circle and color it in. Cut out the face, leaving a quarter-inch margin all around. Glue the face into the empty center of one of your plates with the colored side on the convex side of the plate.
Glue a knotted loop of string to the inside edge of one of the plates. Glue the two plates together, concave side to concave side, then decorate the fluted rim on each side.
In the daytime when the sun is shining in, turn your ornament so that the colored side faces out. The incoming sunlight will illuminate the celestial face. When the lights are on inside, turn the colored side in.
Elvish window ornament
[contents]
2. This line is more usually translated as “What of the elves?” but I prefer this one, provided by John Lindow under the entry “Elves,” in his Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs.
3. Quite often, the terms fairy, elf, and pixy are used interchangeably. However, as Ruth L. Tongue explains in Somerset Folklore, the Somerset pixies defeated the fairies at some mythical point in time and drove them all west of the River Parrett. Since we mortals are not all of one tribe, it should come as no surprise that our otherworldly neighbors have also divided themselves into factions.
4. The writers who described these blue warriors did not make it clear if their skin was only painted or tattooed. If the latter were the case, an ink made from woad would have been the sensible choice since woad reduces swelling when applied to the skin.
5. “Sigvat” is the spelling used in Erling Monsen and A. H. Smith’s translation of Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla: or, Lives of the Norse Kings. If you are looking for the scald in another translation, you might find him under “Sighvat.” The episode concerned takes place in chapter 91 of The History of St. Olav in Heimskringla.
6. “The Finn King’s Daughter” is an example of what is known to folklorists as Tale Type 870: The Princess Confined in the Mound, and is found outside Scandinavia as well. See Reidar Christiansen’s book Folktales of Norway.
7. Had it actually been Christmas, the charcoal burners would not have been in the forest to meet her, for charcoal burning was done only during the windless days of summer.
8. These words are spoken by the Cinderella figure in “The Sisters and the Elves,” on page 55 of Jacqueline Simpson’s book Icelandic Folktales and Legends. In the West Fjords of Iceland, it was customary to speak such formulae at either Christmas or New Year’s Eve.
CHAPTER THREE
Dead by Christmas Morning
We have not quite finished with the elves, which is just as well since, with the television off, you’ll need a few more stories to keep your guests entertained at Álfablót. We’ve already learned something about the nature of our friends from the other side of the veil as well as how to entertain them. In this chapter we’ll examine the more sinister implications of opening your home to the elves.
Queen of the Elves
For years, Hild, a middle-aged housekeeper on a sheep farm tucked somewhere in the green mountains of Iceland, had graciously volunteered to stay at home and prepare the feast while the rest of the household attended church on Christmas Eve. This should have been the first clue that the housekeeper was not what she seemed, but somehow it just didn’t click with the widowed farmer who employed her. You see, in medieval Iceland, no one in his or her right mind would offer to stay home alone on the most dangerous night of the year.
The “Dead by Christmas Morning” motif is a tradition that certainly predates both the Old Norse sagas and Christmas itself.9 In the old Icelandic stories, death was not the inevitable outcome for the unfortunate servant left to himself or herself on Christmas Eve, but it was a very real possibility. If she was lucky, she might only be driven mad or carried off into the mountains, never to be seen again.
Hild, on the other hand, lives to see the dawn each Christmas morning and is never any the worse for it. In fact, she shows every sign of having been busy the whole night through: the floors are swept, the tapestries hung, and there is the butter, skyr, smoked mutton, and a box of snowflake breads all ready to be eaten by the hungry churchgoers when they return. Unfortunately, a succession of newly hired shepherds has not fared so well.
If the farm were not so remote, as Icelandic sheep farms tend to be, the master would take all his hands to church with him. But the church is a long way off and the household must set out early in order to make it in time for the Midnight Mass. As for the sheep, they never take a day off; so as long as there are a few patches of grass peeking out from the ice and snow, they must be taken out to graze, then returned at nightfall to the comfort of the fold. So, while the farmhouse remains in Hild’s competent care, one of the shepherds—and it’s always the new guy—must stay behind to look after the sheep.
And each Christmas morning, the farmer has returned to find the lone shepherd dead in his bed. Since there is never so much as a mark on the poor fellow, the farmer really cannot guess the cause. Hild would seem the obvious suspect, but surely she was too busy polishing the candlesticks and making pretty patterns in the butter to have murdered anyone. And what motive would she have had for wishing all of those shepherds dead?
After having buried several young men in his employ, the farmer decides he will take on no new hands; he’ll stay behind with the sheep himself if he has to. But that summer, a young tough arrives at the farm and applies for a job. He must be some kind of desperado, for he seems eager to work there despite the rumors he’s heard. The farmer is reluctant to take him on, but the young man is insistent, and, sure enough, he stays to take charge of the sheep on Christmas Eve.
The tale does not include any awkward encounters between shepherd and housekeeper over the course of the day. If the place is anything like the historic Glambaer farm in Skagafjord in the north of the country, then this is not surprising. Icelandic farmhouses are sprawling affairs, and the shepherd’s work would have kept him some distance from it. Returning at night to the baðstofa, or main living quarters, he would have eaten his supper sitting on his bed while Hild was still busy in the kitchen.
Wearily, the shepherd wipes his bowl and spoon with a wisp of straw, stows h
is dishes, and tucks himself into bed. He fights sleep, but it’s an uphill battle, and his eyes are just sliding closed when he hears the housekeeper enter the baðstofa. Now only feigning sleep, he allows her to fix a bridle about his head. He does not fight her as she tugs at the headstall and leads him out under the cold stars. She climbs on his back and proceeds to ride him at great speed deep into the mountains.
It would make a less ridiculous picture if Hild had used the bridle to turn the shepherd into one of those adorably shaggy Icelandic horses, but this is not the case. Her mount is still a man, and her magical instrument is the gandreiðarbeizli10 or “elf-ride bridle,” more commonly translated as “witch’s bridle.” Made from the bones and skin of a recently buried corpse, it allowed the witch to turn any creature or object into a swift, convenient means of transport. It might have been kinder for Hild to have used a milking stool, butter churn, or brewing vat to get where she was going, but then we would have no story.
And before we judge the housekeeper too harshly, it must be mentioned that detailed instructions for making the so-called witch’s bridle date only to the seventeenth century, when the Icelanders, like their continental counterparts, had become obsessed with witches of the Satanic sort and with a malevolent magic grounded in the freshly turned earth of the graveyard. While the practices of the early modern era could be downright disgusting, the gandreiðarbeizli is actually an artifact of the ancient gandreið, the Elf-Ride or Wild Hunt. While the passing of the gandreið was always an ominous occurrence, its heathen witnesses were usually more awestruck than horrified. In Njal’s Saga, chapter 125, the Norse god Odin appears as a black figure on a gray horse inside a ring of flames. The horse is described as a creature of both ice and fire, while the rider uses his torch to ignite the sky above the eastern mountains. Could this be the aurora borealis? The post-saga storytellers of Borgarfjörður tell us that the gandreiðarbeizli made a whistling, rattling sound, as the northern lights are sometimes said to do.
The Old Magic of Christmas Page 4
