The Old Magic of Christmas

by Linda Raedisch

  But our housekeeper on her human mount has now come to a deep and faintly glowing fissure among the rocks. Without hesitation, she dismounts and clambers down into it, soon disappearing from sight. What is our shepherd to do? Though still in human form, the magic has robbed him of the use of his hands, so he must rub his head against a boulder to free himself from both the bridle and the enchantment. There must be more to this young stranger than meets the eye, for he happens to be carrying a magic stone in his pocket, and as soon as the bridle is off, he takes the stone in his left palm, immediately blinking out of sight. Invisible, he follows Hild in among the rocks.

  Once through the fissure, we are not in Iceland anymore. On the other side, the terrain is much smoother. We are given little description of Elfland, but one would guess that there is no snow here and that the plain is bathed in a golden twilight, for, despite the late hour, the shepherd has no trouble making out the shape of the housekeeper or of the great, gilded hall toward which she is bound. Once inside its doors, Hild exchanges her housekeeper’s apron for a queen’s regalia and, gathering her rich skirts in her hands, settles herself in the high seat beside the King of Elfland. There she is attended by her five children as well as a whole host of courtiers. The elves, who appear quite human, are all dressed to the nines, and the long trestles are laid for a feast. In one corner, however, the shepherd notices an old lady sitting apart from the glittering throng, hands folded, sour-faced and radiating the dark aura of a malevolent fairy.

  Queen Hild dandles her children and converses with her husband. The royal elf family appears at once both happy and inconsolable. The shepherd observes the bittersweet tableau, at the same time taking care not to tread on any of the dancing courtiers’ toes. Meanwhile, the queen has given one of her gold rings to her youngest child to play with. When the child drops it on the floor, the shepherd swoops down, snatches the ring, and slips it on his own invisible finger.

  As we know it must, the hour arrives for Queen Hild to depart. She rises, puts off her queenly robes, and knots her kerchief over her hair. Her husband and children are weeping and tearing at their elfin locks, but what can she do? She is doomed to return to the mortal realm. The elf king appeals to the grim figure in the corner, but if help is to be had from that quarter, the old lady will not give it. As Queen Hild bids them all a tearful farewell, the shepherd creeps out of the hall ahead of her, hurrying back across the plains of Elfland, scrambling up and out of the gap in the rocks just in the nick of time. When Hild climbs up after him, he has pocketed both the gold ring and the invisibility stone, replaced the magic bridle about his head, and assumed a vacant stare. The erstwhile queen mounts him, none the wiser, and home they go.

  Christmas morning on the farm is a happy one for a change, for the new shepherd is found alive in his bed. He tells the farmer of the odd “dream” he has had and of the part the enigmatic housekeeper played in it. Hild denies everything . . . unless he can produce some evidence of his adventure? At this, the shepherd produces the little ring of elf-gold.

  At the sight of it, Hild sighs and confides that hers is a rags-to-riches story. In Elfland, she had been no more than a lowly servant, but the Elf King fell in love with her nevertheless. His mother disapproved of the match. Though an elf herself, Hild was placed under an álög, or elf-uttered curse—in this case, one uttered by her mother-in-law. Banished from the royal residence and from Elfland itself, Hild was compelled to ride a man to death each Christmas until such time as she was found out and executed as a witch. That had been her mother-in-law’s plan, but this year’s man lived to tell the tale. Because he’d had the courage to follow her along the Lower Road, he had freed her from the álög. (It is not clear why his time in harness had not killed him, for Hild got just as much mileage out of him as she had from the others. It may be that not falling asleep was the key.) Having related all this, Queen Hild has no further need of the witch’s bridle to reach her home; she simply vanishes.

  Our shepherd, we are told, eventually married and took up farming for himself. He did so well that folk credited his prosperity to the beneficence of the Queen of the Elves.11 As for the farmer, with the curse now lifted, we can assume he had no more trouble getting good help.

  Recipe: Icelandic Snowflake Breads

  In Iceland, the beginning of the Christmas season means it’s time to make laufabraud, snowflake breads. If you’re worried that the trolls might eat up all your hard work, you can hide your pastry snowflakes in a tin in the garage until Christmas Eve. The “breads” in this recipe are smaller than traditional examples—which are eight to nine inches in diameter—so they can be fried in a smaller pan.

  Ingredients:

  1¾ cups flour

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon sugar

  1 Tablespoon unsalted butter

  1 cup whole milk

  Lard

  Powdered sugar

  In a large bowl, sift flour, baking powder, and sugar together. Set aside.

  Heat milk and butter until butter is melted. Do not boil. Add milk and butter to flour mixture a little at a time, stirring, then working with your hands until you have a stiff dough. Add more flour if needed.

  Icelandic snowflake breads

  Knead dough on lightly floured surface until you can form it into a smooth ball. Divide the ball into thirty-two equal parts and form each part into a smooth, round ball. Cover balls with a damp cloth.

  On a floured surface, roll each ball out with a rolling pin to about 1⁄8-inch thickness or about 5 inches in diameter. Try to keep them nice and round. Stack rolled-out rounds between sheets of waxed paper.

  Heat about 1½ inches of lard in a frying pan. While it’s heating, you can make your snowflakes. You can prick patterns directly into the round with the point of a sharp knife or, making sure it is well-floured, fold the round into quarters and snip the pattern in with scissors just as you would make a paper snowflake. You can cut little triangles out of the dough or cut triangular flaps and press them back.

  When the lard is hot enough to make a droplet of water hiss and spit, lay the first snowflake gently in it. Fry each side for about 30 seconds or until golden brown.

  Drain snowflakes on paper towels and sprinkle with powdered sugar when cool.

  Home but Not Alone

  In “Hild, Queen of the Elves,” the hero must travel to Elfland, but it is actually more common for the elves to invite themselves onto the farm. This folktale motif is known as “The Christmas Visitors.” Most often it is a young girl who is left home but not quite alone. One Icelandic version comes to us from the pen of the rather schoolmarmish Hólmfrídur Árnadóttir, whose childhood memoir, When I Was a Girl in Iceland, was one of a series published in the early 1900s.

  Árnadóttir writes of a “young maiden,” the new girl, left behind for unspecified reasons on Christmas Eve. Not as industrious as Hild, she lights the candles in the baðstofa and settles down to read the Bible. The fact that she has a Bible and knows how to read it tells us that we have now entered the Protestant era in Iceland. The story could even be taking place in Hólmfrídur’s own day, by which time not much else had changed since the Viking age except for the introduction of the spinning wheel and coffee mill.

  The heroine is concentrating on the printed words before her when who should come trooping into the room but a “crowd” of people of all ages. There is nothing sinister about them; in fact, they’re in a festive mood and eager for the pious maid to join in their dancing, but she ignores them and continues reading. The dancers offer her “beautiful presents,” but the imperturbable girl does not even look up from her book. The party goes on all night without her giving in to temptation, though she must have had to pull her feet up on the bed to let the swirling couples by. No ballroom to begin with, the baðstofa would have been crowded with chairs, spinning wheels, and beds—the one at Glambaer contained eleven—so there wo
uld not have been room to swing a Yule Cat (see CHAPTER EIGHT), let alone host a dance.

  Hólmfrídur gives no indication that the uninvited guests are diminutive or even that they are elves, but they are certainly no ordinary neighbors, for at dawn they vanish, leaving the baðstofa just as it was. It would be nice to hear that they left a few gifts behind to pay for the use of the space, but apparently it is enough that our young maiden has survived the night. She must have gotten something out of the bargain, for it was she who tacitly received the unearthly visitors every Christmas Eve thereafter.

  In “The Sisters and the Elves,” the daughter of a devoutly syncretist household actually welcomes the merrymakers with the greeting mentioned in chapter 2: “Let them come who wish to come, and let them go who wish to go, and do no harm to me or mine.” This girl, too, keeps herself to herself and keeps her nose in her Bible while the party is going on, but because she praises God when the sun comes up, the elves are forced to drop their precious gifts before they vanish. (It’s all right, though: they get their treasures back again the following year when the less disciplined sister is left behind.)

  The dark-minded reader will detect in the preceding stories the distant echo of human sacrifice, a seasonal gift made to the powerful elves, fairies, or land-spirits while the rest of the household looks away, and I will not say such a reader is wrong. But the more important element to recognize is the code of conduct outlined in the stories. Certainly these tales were told for entertainment—and how much more chilling they would have been when told in the darkening baðstofa or by the trembling light of an oil-fed flame at the kitchen table—but they were also teaching tools. There is another, rather daunting class of beings out there, the message runs, whose world often collides with our own. There is a good chance that someday you will encounter them, either in the borderlands or at one of those shaky times of year like Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and when you do, you had better know how to handle them.

  In our time, the most effective tool for banishing the otherworldly is the light switch. One flick and “Poof !”—nothing there. Like our ancestors, we perceive what we expect to perceive in the night kitchen. It’s up to us to decide whether we heard the cat upsetting the dish rack or a cry for attention from the other side. For most of us, that “nothing there” is perfectly acceptable, even desirable. But there are others of us who have always hoped to perceive something more, despite the danger. The holiest night of the year is also one of the best times to send the rest of the family to church, drink a strong cup of coffee, cut the power, and wait with eyes open on the darkness.

  Sitting Out 101

  If your family happens to have other plans for you on Christmas Eve, there’s still New Year’s Eve for hobnobbing with the elves. In Sweden, December 31 was celebrated by shooting at the sky and setting off the inauspiciously named “tomte-flares,” a kind of firecracker called after the little gnomelike creature that inhabits the Swedish stable. This was supposed to frighten off those ghosts, witches, and trolls who had not already departed on Christmas morning, but I’m sure the racket caused many a tomten to stick his head in the straw as well.

  In sparsely populated Iceland, however, the humans were more careful. There, with the ocean on one hand and the jagged volcanic wastes of the interior on the other, the early settlers quickly realized the importance of not offending the elemental spirits who were their neighbors. Most of the time, they tried to keep well out of their way, but on December 31, a few hardy souls went looking for the Hidden Folk. In Iceland, New Year’s Eve is Moving Day for the elves, so that was the best time to catch them and ask them what the future might hold.

  The practice of “Sitting Out,” as it was called, did not originate in Iceland but in Norway, where the ritual was enacted atop an elf-mound or deep in the forest. In the old country, it was eventually classified as witchcraft and outlawed, but the sometimes cantankerous folk who emigrated from Norway to Iceland and the Faeroe Islands tended to be the kind of people who didn’t like the king telling them whether or not they could talk to the elves. Sitting Out used to take place on Christmas Eve or Twelfth Night but was transferred to New Year’s Eve when January 1 became the official beginning of the year.

  How to commune with the elves on New Year’s Eve? It’s not really all that difficult. First, you need a gray cat. Place it in a harness or cat carrier—whichever is more comfortable—because you will be taking it outside. Your kit should also include an axe, a sheepskin with gray fleece intact, and a walrus hide. If you can’t get a walrus hide, the hide of an elderly ox, preferably freshly flayed, will also do. No fasting is required. I recommend a strong cup of coffee before you set off because you are going to have to stay awake all night.

  Next, you must find a crossroads, all four branches of which lead directly to churches. Lay the sheepskin on the ground and yourself upon it. Cover yourself with the hide so that no part of you is visible. (Norwegian wizards skipped the sheepskin and sat on the hide, around which they inscribed nine squares in the earth, but the Icelandic instructions make no mention of this.) You must now lie perfectly still with the axe in your hands and gaze steadily at the edge of the blade, though how you’re supposed to make it out in the darkness under the hide I’m not sure. In any case, you must be all in place by midnight—you’ll know when it is midnight by the ringing of the church bells. Do not fall asleep; if you do, you might twitch, and you must not move any part of your body except your lips until dawn. Still staring at the edge of the axe, you can now start reciting all the incantations you learned in preparation for this occasion. Did I forget to mention that this kind of Sitting Out is only for experienced wizards?

  Not to worry; there is a layman’s version. When the elves encounter someone lying or sitting at a crossroads, they are compelled to stop. Anxious to get on with their move, they will first try to entice the sitter to come along with them, even assuming the shapes of his mother, sisters, or daughters. Failing that, they will offer him all sorts of wonderful gifts, and they always know just what the sitter will find most tempting. In earlier times, many a hungry Icelander was able to stare straight ahead when offered silver chalices and gold book mounts, but could not help gazing longingly at a spoonful of hot meat drippings. If you can hold out without speaking or glancing from side to side, then you can praise God aloud at first light and the elves will be forced to leave the proffered gifts behind, but no one has ever accomplished this. In fact, the sitter is often the worse for the encounter: that’s how it goes when you expect to get something for nothing.

  If you’re not looking for treasure, and you don’t particularly want to know what the future holds, you can still celebrate New Year’s Eve with the elves. There were no household sprites on the Icelandic sheep farm—the little fellows never made it that far—but in the Middle Ages, a few devoted women set out food offerings at a distance from the house on New Year’s Eve. They also placed extra lights about the grounds to invite the weary elves to come inside and rest their feet before traveling on to their new homestead. Back in Norway, Sitting Out took place as needed, not necessarily during the long nights of Yule, but the Icelanders’ concept of an elves’ moving day is specific to the Christmas season.

  Though they’re usually a little bit behind the times, our otherworldly brethren are not incapable of change. Moving elves might now appear as a normal-looking family with a U-Haul in tow. I would not advise inviting any unknown singletons inside your home on Christmas, New Year’s, or any other eve, but if a bedraggled, slightly retro-looking clan including women and children shows up and asks for help changing a tire, don’t shut the door in their faces. Once you have done them a service, you can accept any gift they offer. Whatever it is, don’t throw it away; it may turn into something more valuable in the morning.

  Oh, and if you’re still wondering what the gray cat was for, you’re going to have to summon the ghost of Icelandic folklorist Jon Arnason, who collected these inst
ructions in the nineteenth century but never followed up on the cat.

  Craft: Elf Wreath

  Some of your elvish guests may depart as soon as you’ve cleared your Álfablót table. Others might decide to stay for the whole festive season. Put this wreath up early and dedicate it to the elves alone. For a base, you can use grapevines or a bare ring of plastic or wood. Wrap the ring all around with a string of clear or colored lights, then wind a long strip of gauze, cheesecloth, or veiling loosely over the lights to create a softer glow. You can remove the cloth on Christmas Eve at the height of the festivities. Taking the wreath down at Twelfth Night (January 6) will be a hint to any lingering otherworldly guests that it’s time to be moving along. Bid them a fond farewell and invite them to come back next year.

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  9. The tradition lives on in Otfried Preussler’s 1971 children’s novel Krabat, though in Krabat it is on New Year’s morning that the journeyman’s corpse is found at the bottom of the stairs. Krabat has been translated into English as The Satanic Mill, which has to be the reason why it has never become a holiday standard in the English-speaking world.

  10. Yes, gand as in “Gandalf.” Gand is a word of uncertain meaning, but it has retained its undeniably magical overtones.

  11. “Hild, Queen of the Elves,” along with accompanying notes, can be found on pages 43–52 of Jacqueline Simpson’s Icelandic Folktales and Legends. See same, page 180, for detailed instructions for making a witch’s bridle, if you must.