The bat would not appear seasonal to us, but this color lithograph was printed in 1895, about the same time that a three-year-old J. R. R. Tolkien first arrived in England from his birthplace in South Africa, a time when the idea that Christmas and New Year’s belonged, in part, to the squeaky creatures of the night could still sell a few postcards. (Grossman’s album also features a tribe of fur-clad fairies roasting a rat over an open fire and a coven of witches scattering Christmas wishes while flying backward on their broomsticks.)
Even at Halloween, bats have never been as popular as black cats, so it’s unlikely they’ll ever become the official mascots of Christmas. They seem to have fallen out of favor with the goblins too, for no further incidents of aerial batmanship have been reported since that infamous night in 1933. Still, you never know, so keep an eye on your stash of Christmas presents and be alert for any flapping or squeaking at the attic window.
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14. Knecht is a false cognate for the English “knight”; it means “farmhand” or “servant.”
15. Denis Jackson’s complete English translation of “Knecht Ruprecht” can be found at www.theodorstorm.co.uk.
16. Rute comes from the same root as rood, the Old English term for the cross on which Christ died.
17. The carving of these Larven is a folk art, but some of the inspiration may have come from the fanciful and sometimes frightful Romanesque carvings in which Berchtesgaden abounds. The St. Peter and St. Johannes Cloister contains a part-human, part-leonine stone visage whose generous tongue, like that of the Krampus, extends well beyond his teeth.
18. Further dialectical developments would produce “Kris Kringle,” which had become a synonym for Santa Claus by 1845.
19. In the Scandinavian home, the ornately carved High Seat was reserved for the master of the household. By breaking in and seating himself there, Old Trond was displaying typical goblin cheek.
CHAPTER SIX
The Scandinavian Household Sprite
If you are not already in possession of a household sprite, you should think very carefully before taking one on. The English version of the household sprite is the boggart, and the most famous boggart was probably the one belonging to the Yorkshire Gilbertsons. Fed up with their boggart’s mischievous pranks, the Gilbertsons decided to move house. The cart was all packed up and ready to go when they heard the boggart speak up from inside the butter churn. “We’re flittin’,” he explained to an inquisitive neighbor. It had never even occurred to the boggart that the family might try to leave without him.
Rather than stay behind in an empty house or, worse yet, get used to a new family, the household sprite will stick with those he knows. Conditioned by centuries of primogeniture, the nisse, tomten, or tonttu will usually cast his lot with the eldest son—that is, the one most likely to inherit the old homestead. There was a time when no farm in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, or Finland was without its tiny, bright-eyed old man to help with the chores at night. Over the last few hundred years, many of these creatures have moved to the cities, especially in Denmark, which has the highest concentration of household sprites. In the Faeroe Islands, the chores were sometimes taken over by the red-capped niðagrisur (see “The Yule Boar” in chapter 8), while in Iceland there are only the huldrefolk, who have no special attachment to the farmstead. Since it was not only second sons traveling to Iceland at the time of settlement,20 this indicates that the household sprite is either reluctant to travel far from his homeland or, like the Celtic fairy, is unable to cross large bodies of water.
Still, accidents and exceptions do happen, so if you are of Scandinavian descent, there is a remote chance that you might already have one of the old fellows living in your home. The information in the following pages should help you to identify him and make him more comfortable. If your family does not hail from that part of the world, or if you come from a side branch of the family, it’s not too late to acquire your own domestic goblin. The best place to do so is at a Scandinavian Christmas market. While there is nothing intrinsically Christmassy about the boggart, the nisse, tomten, and tonttu are the epitome of Yule. Yes, you could order one online, but picking them up in your hands and patting their knitted caps will help you to choose the one that’s right for you. Failing this, you can follow the instructions at the end of this chapter and make your own.
A homemade house-sprite is not just a consolation prize but a long-standing practice. Medieval Germans were carving little kobolds out of boxwood back in the thirteenth century, ostensibly just for fun but originally as objects of veneration. In Scandinavia, the carving of these creatures is now a specialized craft. (No doubt our ancestors would be surprised how popular the wooden trolls have become!)
Jacob Grimm assures us that household sprites can indeed be bought and sold, but if you are the third pair of hands to receive one, you must hold on to it forever. Grimm identified all of these tutelary spirits, along with the kobold, with the ancestral ghosts who dwelt in the hearth and liked to use it as a front door. There is no denying that the household sprite has come down in the world. Assuming that he is indeed of the same lineage as those age-old spirits of the fireplace, he resides there no longer. At some point, he was moved to the periphery of the home, to the attic, stable, or barn, and the daily repast that was set out for him became a once-a-year treat. Household sprites are not all cut from the same homespun; there are subtle differences in their dress, characters, and preferences. We’ll begin our study with the nisse, whose kind covers the largest area: both Norway and Denmark.
Nisse
Nisse may be derived from Nicholas and thus a generic nickname, but the nisse has never really had anything to do with St. Nicholas Day; Christmas Eve is his special night. The farm nisse used to be particular about Thursdays: there was to be no spinning or chopping of firewood on a Thursday night, a reflection of his heathen leanings.21
The Norwegian farm nisse was once restricted to the southeastern part of the country. The northern and western districts were the territory of the gardvord and the somewhat more crotchety tunkall. The earliest gardvord was a giant who could hold his own against any troll. Because he was too big to fold himself up in the hayloft, he was given the use of an empty room or outbuilding. He allowed himself to be seen more often than the nisse, while the tunkall appeared to and conversed only with the elderly. Most likely, the tunkall or the gardvord was the ghost of some old grandfather, perhaps the one who had established the farm and vowed never to leave it.
A descendant of the gardvord and tunkall, the nisse is now drastically shrunken. The German kobold was supposed to be the size of a four-year-old child, but the nisse is only as tall as a one-year-old. When he chooses to doff his red cap, thereby making himself visible, you can see that he has a long gray beard. The city nisse might wear a red or blue suit, but the farm nisse wears a smock and trousers of natural-colored wool. Though they’re quite scuffed and ordinary-looking, his buckled shoes can carry him over mountains and bogs at terrific speeds. The Christmas market nisse tends to stoutness, even cuddliness, but the old-time farm nisse is simply an old man in miniature.
Though child-sized, he prefers adult company, when he wants company at all. He does not like his routine disrupted. If he catches you spying on him while he’s doing his chores, he will desert you no matter how much it pains him to do so. When making his nocturnal rounds, he carries a lantern with a blue flame in it. His work finished, he retires either to the hayloft, stable, cellar, or oldest tree in the yard. The careless snapping of even one branch of this tree will also force him to leave the farm. Since he does his work under cover of darkness, he must sleep through the long days of summer. He gets up again around Michaelmas (September 29), when he switches his pointed cap for a round one, just for the day.
The Norwegian nisse avoids the sun but loves the moonlight, especially as reflected by the hard crust of the snow.
Still spry, he enjoys all the usual winter sports—he may look like he’s on his last legs, but his strength and agility will surprise you. Another of the nisse’s idiosyncrasies is his preference for black horses. On the farm, one horse, usually a black mare, will appear particularly well cared for, her coat gleaming, her mane combed and even braided when no one is looking. If such a horse is sold, the nisse will go with her.
On Christmas Eve, it is imperative that you serve your nisse a bowl of porridge with a fat pat of butter in the middle. The Norwegian nisse also likes cake and beer. Unlike the English brownie or Robin Goodfellow, he has no problem with clothes. For a Christmas present, you can’t go wrong with a new red cap with a tassel at the point or a jacket fringed with tiny bells, but don’t give him anything as fine as a pair of white leather breeches; he will think them too nice to work in, and you’ll have to do all the chores yourself.
At first glance, you might not be able to tell the Danish nisse from the Norwegian, for the only difference is the absence of the tassel on the Danish nisse’s cap. Denmark’s Jutland peninsula once had the most household sprites per square mile. Consequently, it is the Jutish nisse who now defines the breed. He is of a petulant bent, and, like his Norwegian cousin, he is not fond of children. At Christmastime he might carry a birch switch tucked in his sash. He takes excellent care of the livestock, even stealing from the neighbors to give them extra grain. His best friend is the family cat, but he also gets along with the pine martens and other creatures that winter among the rafters. Dogs bark at him, which is one of the reasons he likes to keep out of sight, though he is not above sitting on a window ledge and swinging his feet just out of reach of the dog’s snapping teeth.
The Jutish nisse might inhabit any dark space on the farm. In the city, he prefers the attic or a spot near the chimney, so perhaps he is not so far removed from the old hearth spirits after all. He is devoted to the family but often at odds with the maids and farmhands. If they tease him, he will take his revenge by yanking off the blankets while they are sleeping, throwing them in the well, or blackening their faces with soot from the fireplace.
Thomas Keightley, writing in 1850, mentions the Jutish nisse’s daily meal of groute, a sweet porridge of hulled oats or wheat grains, but I would not advise serving your nisse oatmeal on Christmas Eve. His tastes have become quite refined over the years, and he now prefers the Frenchified ris a l’amande, a sweet rice pudding made with almonds, whipped cream, and sherry. Because he is a humble fellow at heart, you should serve it to him in a wooden bowl with a wooden spoon. If you can only manage a basic rice porridge (recipe follows), be sure the butter pat is cold enough that he will have time to notice it before it melts and trickles to the bottom of the bowl. If he thinks there is no butter in his porridge, he will throw a tantrum.
Though easily peeved, the Jutish nisse is usually sorry for it afterward, and there are few things you could do that would make him desert the family. There is a story of a particularly prankish Jutish nisse who drove his master and family to move house. The story ends just like that of the Gilbertsons’ boggart, but in this case the nisse, popping his head out of a washtub, is plainly visible.
Tomten
In the picture-book version of Viktor Rydberg’s The Christmas Tomten, the titular hero looks in on a family absorbed in the Gospel of St. Luke and remarks to his orphan companion, “I’m very fond of that baby he is reading about . . .
But mind you, old Thor was a fine fellow too.” It’s not surprising, then, that when Thor’s goat, the Julbok, went into retirement in the mid-1800s, the tomten took over his gift-giving duties in Sweden. Harald Wiberg’s pencil and watercolor illustrations for The Christmas Tomten reveal a barrel-shaped, bandy-legged old man whose white beard touches his toes and whose eyes glow like a cat’s in the moonlight. Though the top of his head does not even reach the doorknob, his nose and hands belong to a much larger creature. His fingertips brush the crust of the snow when he walks, as does the tassel on the point of his stocking cap.
The visual artists of the turn of the twentieth century were in accord with Wiberg about the tomten’s white beard, though he often went without the tassel in the Christmas postcards of the period. In place of the nisse’s magic buckled shoes, the tomten wears gray stockings and wooden clogs, the better to make his way across the snowy yard. If he wants to get somewhere fast, he borrows the farmer’s sleigh.
Many a tomten abides in the botrae, an ancient tree that grows before the farmhouse door. This is usually a linden, ash, or elm, but the earliest botrae may have been a crab-
apple tree.22 In another, larger life, which the tomten now only dimly remembers, he planted the tree himself. Tomt refers to the packed earth that lies underneath the buildings of the farmstead and extends into the square courtyard. Thus, the tomten, or tomte-gubbe, “old man about the grounds,” is the least likely to emigrate. His bones are older even than the beams holding up the walls, and he identifies himself with the very ground upon which his house is built.
Surround the tomten’s Christmas porridge with a moat of honey in addition to the butter pat on top, and he will be especially pleased. The best place to leave his meal is in the stable, for he prefers the company of the livestock. The gifts presented to him on Christmas morning should include a length of gray homespun out of which he will presumably make his own clothes, a pinch of tobacco, and as much clay as a spade can hold. This last is either a token of his chthonic nature, the material for making a pipe, or an acknowledgment that it was he who laid the first shovelful of earth in the house walls.
Tonttu
Like the tomten, the Finnish tonttu is a pipe smoker. He doesn’t mind a glass of brandy alongside his rice porridge either. You can put his Christmas Eve meal in the sauna, the seat of both physical and spiritual cleanliness in the Finnish home. The Finns themselves like to dress up as Joulutonttuja, “Yule tonttus,” in red cotton caps with bells at their points, and they are most fond of dressing up little girls in the full kit: red cap, red suit, striped scarf, and stockings. That’s all right for the Joulutonttuja cavorting in the shopping districts—Finland needs a spark of color at this time of year—but I would guess that the ancient little man sipping his brandy in the sauna dresses more soberly.
If you have never seen a tonttu, it is because he does not spend very much time above ground. His real home is a glittering world inside the earth. Some tonttu did not come with the farm but had to be fetched from the churchyard. Once he had been brought home, he had to be given his own room with his own bed and dinner table. That done, he would make sure the family prospered.
There seems to be a genetic link between the tonttu and the kirkonwaki, or “church folk,” a misshapen little people who dwell in the shadow of the altar cloth. The kirkonwaki’s misshapenness marks him as a seite, a suggestively formed stone or tree stump that served as an object of veneration among the pre-Christian Finnic peoples. The most unusual thing about the kirkonwaki is the existence of females among them. The reason there are not more kirkonwaki in the world is because these females have difficulty giving birth. When his wife goes into labor, the kirkonwaki will seek out a Christian woman to come and assist her with a laying on of hands, suggesting that the kirkonwaki are not Christians themselves. As payment, the mortal woman is rewarded with gifts of silver and gold.
Jacob Grimm relates the same story as told in Sweden. Here, the distressed husband is described only as “a little man with a black face.” For her trouble, the Christian midwife receives “old silver vessels.” If not for the story’s pedigree—it’s an example of Migratory Legend 5070—one would have to wonder if the whole thing had not been a fabrication to explain away the presence of church treasures in a house where they did not belong.
The Resilient Sprite
It would be simplistic to say that the nisse, tomten, and tonttu are the diminished spirits of the dead and nothing more. For one thing, a belief in these often comical li
ttle creatures coexisted for a time with the larger gardvord and tunkall. Their capers also overlapped with the more serious idea that both the recently and the long and nameless dead visited their old homes on Christmas Eve.
As part of a ritual once prevalent throughout Europe, the table was laid for the ghostly visitors; candles were left burning for their enjoyment; and, in some cases, the living vacated their beds to allow the ancestors a good night’s sleep before the bells began to toll on Christmas morning. In Celtic lands, this ritual was enacted at Halloween, while in the Nordic, Finnic, and Baltic realms, it was eventually absorbed into Yule. In Scandinavia, it may once have been part of the late autumn Álfablót and Dísablót observances.
The folktales in which the Scandinavian household sprite appears have much in common with the stories of kobolds, boggarts, and brownies elsewhere, but the sprite himself is unique in the details of his clothing, his preferences, and his close but often frustrated relationship with the rest of the household. He is, I think, a Christian society’s grudgingly affectionate remembrance of its heathen dead as viewed through a prism of humor and imagination. The gardvord, tunkall, and hungry Christmas ghost have all faded away, but the little old man about the grounds is as active as ever.
The Old Magic of Christmas Page 8
