While elsewhere a round man with a reindeer sleigh rolls in, in Iceland thirteen troll boys come down from the mountains – and their mother keeps a cauldron and a rather poor reputation. Welcome to Grýla and the Jólasveinar, perhaps the naughtiest Christmas figures in the North.
Iceland's Christmas has no single, kindly gift-bringer. It has a whole clan – and that clan comes straight out of the rock. At its head stands Grýla, an old troll-woman of considerable appetite, along with her husband Leppalúði, thirteen sons, and a cat you would rather not cross. No sleigh, no pointed hat, no ho-ho-ho. Instead a rugged highland, a long dark winter, and figures originally meant less for cuddling than for fearing.
It is precisely this contradiction that makes it so appealing: Iceland did not import its Christmas messengers from the south but drew them from its own store of legend. The figures are old, their friendly side is young – and in between lies a story full of cauldrons, spoons, and secretly pilfered sausages.
Grýla is the heart of the whole tale. In folklore she is a ravenous giantess who roams the land in winter, on the lookout for children who refuse to behave. Anyone who was naughty ends up – so the threat goes – in her great sack, is carried off up into the mountains, and finishes as a hearty stew in her pot. It is the classic bogey figure with which generations of parents steered the darkest season of the year a little more smoothly through Advent.
You need not paint it in gore to grasp its power. Grýla is the winter warning made flesh: out there it is cold, dangerous, and pitch black, so stay good and stay near the fire. That she never actually takes anyone, but only ever threatens, is part of the game. She is the Nordic counterpart to the wagging finger – only with troll teeth.
More famous today than the mother are her sons: the Jólasveinar, literally the “Yule lads.” Of troll and giant descent, anything but well-behaved helpers, they come down in the thirteen nights before Christmas – one each night, from 12 to 24 December. And because each of them nurses his own little weakness, they carry telling names that reveal exactly what mischief to expect on that particular night.
First comes Stekkjarstaur, the Sheepfold Stick, who fusses about the sheep. He is followed by Giljagaur, the Gully Oaf, and Stúfur, the Stubby one with a taste for pan scrapings. Then arrive the kitchen pests: Þvörusleikir, the Spoon-Licker, Pottaskefill, the Pot-Scraper, and Askasleikir, the Bowl-Licker. Hurðaskellir makes his mark as the nightly Door-Slammer, Skyrgámur gobbles the beloved skyr, and Bjúgnakrækir hooks the sausages. Toward the end it grows eerier: Gluggagægir, the Window-Peeper, spies inside, Gáttaþefur, the Doorway-Sniffer, scents the festive baking, Ketkrókur angles for the roast with his meat hook, and last of all Kertasníkir, the Candle-Beggar, steps onto the stage. After that, in reverse order, they take their leave back into the mountains – until the last has vanished by Epiphany.
The whole thing turns truly cosy through a small custom that Icelandic children keep to this day. During the thirteen nights they place a shoe on the windowsill. Whoever behaved decently finds a sweet or a small treat in it come morning – a greeting from the lad who looked in that night. Whoever was naughty, on the other hand, gets a raw potato. No cauldron, no sack, just a tuber in the shoe: a mild, almost affectionate punishment that in the end usually makes everyone smile.
This detail shows nicely how the trolls have changed over time. From the grim fellows once feared, they have become figures that tease rather than terrify. The potato is the friendly remnant of the old threat – just strict enough to make an impression, and mild enough that no one need really tremble.
The family is more than mother and sons. There is Leppalúði, Grýla's husband, who in many tales sits rather idly in the cave while his wife does the work. And there is Jólakötturinn, the Christmas Cat – a huge, dark beast prowling through the snowy night. Legend has it that it devours all those who received no new item of clothing for the feast. What sounds cruel at first was once a solid incentive: whoever had spun and woven diligently by Christmas was rewarded with a new garment – and so stayed off the cat's menu.
Together this makes a household unlike any other Christmas land's: a troll mother, a lazy giant, thirteen thieving sons, and a ravenous cat, all gathered in a mountain cave, each with a fixed place in the run of the feast.
How old is all this really? Grýla herself is surprisingly well attested. Her name appears as early as the 13th century – in Snorri's Skáldskaparmál she simply stands in the list of troll-women, with no Christmas at all, and in the sagas too she is met as a figure of dread.
“Grýla is the name of one of the troll-women…” after the mention in Snorri's Skáldskaparmál, 13th c. (public-domain tradition)
Back then, then, Grýla was simply one troll among many, an embodiment of the wild and wicked. Of Advent shoes and well-behaved children there is not yet a word at this point. The leap into the Christmas feast came only much later – and with it the whole colourful clan we know today.
The name Grýla is attested as early as the 13th century, among other places in the Skáldskaparmál of the Prose Edda and in saga texts such as Íslendinga saga and Sverris saga. There she appears as a mere troll figure with no connection to the feast at all. The Jólasveinar with their telling names, the shoe on the windowsill, Leppalúði, and the Christmas Cat are a firm part of the more recent Icelandic folk tradition, as gathered for instance by Jón Árnason in the 19th century – and became a nationally cultivated Christmas tradition in the 20th century.
“Ancient heathen Christmas magic” is only half true. Grýla is old, her Christmas role is young: only in the 17th century is she linked to the feast in poems and made the mother of the Jólasveinar. The fixed number of thirteen lads, their friendlier traits, and the custom of the shoe likewise took shape largely between the 18th and 20th centuries. Especially formative was the poem “Jólin koma” by Jóhannes úr Kötlum from 1932, which popularised the sequence and names familiar today. In short: an old troll figure in a comparatively new Christmas role.
Perhaps the charm lies precisely in the fact that Iceland never polished its Christmas smooth. Where elsewhere everything glows sugar-sweet, a remnant of wildness remains here: the long winter, the rock, the uncertain thing in the dark. Grýla and her sons are the charmingly eerie reminder that feasts have always grown, too, out of what people once feared – and that this fear can be tamed with imagination, humour, and a few candles.
So in the end the circle closes in a thoroughly festive way after all. The threatening troll-woman has become a lovingly told family, the cauldron a shoe on the sill, the fear a happy anticipation. For thirteen nights a new lad looks in each evening, bringing either a small treat or a potato – and so carries, quite in passing, a piece of the Nordic world of legend right into the heart of the feast.
Jól – the Yule feast · The Yule Cat · Þorrablót – the winter feast · The Germanic feasts · The solstice festivals.