NORDIC SANTAS

The Nordic santas are a fascinating mixture of elves, gnomes and a certain bishop in Asia Minor. Elves are good spirits that live everywhere in nature while gnomes can be both good and bad and are always attached to a certain place.

The house gnomes that have been common in the Indo-European language group areas for at least 4 000 years, are a latecomer to Scandinavia where they became the farms' good spirit that took care of farm animals and people.

From originally demanding payment for their services (often in the form of porridge on Christmas Eve), the heathen gnome merged with Christianity's Saint Nikolaus to become the jovial distributor of Christmas gifts and good cheer. This "santa" was given a physical image in recent history through the work of illustrators and authors.

Today all the Nordic countries, including Greenland, claim to be the home of the increasingly Americanized santa and at times the conflict has been so dramatic that the Finnish Joulupukki was even excommunicated by the 32nd Annual World Santa Clause Conference in Copenhagen in 1995.

FINLAND

The first Finnish santa is depicted in an illustration to Zacharias Topelius' story about a 700-year-old tomte who watches over the Turku castle. He looks a lot like Saint Nikolaus but later artists depicted him more like an old Sapmi and that may well be the reason why the Finnish santa has for so long been said to reside in Lappland, that has now been officially proclaimed Santa Clause Land.

Since 1982 he lives with his elves and reindeer in a large log building in the village of Korvakuturi, two kilometers away from the Rovaniemi airport where tourists fly in from Britain and Japan for 8-hour visits with Joulupukki. Business has been so brisk for Santa, Finnair, and the Finnish trade ministry that a new Santaland theme park with a 9 000 square meter workshop should be ready for next Christmas. The facility will be open all year round, excluding the twohour reindeer sleigh tours (at $150) and other winter excursions. Santa provides a lot of employment and the only complaints have been heard from the Sapmi who feel exploited by the tacky souvenirs and the "Lapp Magic" session in an open tent that is included in all the charter tourists' schedule.
Thousands of children write to Joulupukki in Lappland, but now you can also e-mail him at http:/www/inet.tele fi/postilsanta.htm. Despite this modernity, it is wonderful to note that most Finnish children still get a visit from Santa on Christmas Eve. He evidently still prefers to deliver gifts in person rather than leaving them on the doorstep, in stockings or at the fireplace.

SWEDEN

In Sweden, like in many of the Nordic countries, it was someone dressed up like a goat that originally distributed the Christmas gifts. All that changed when Viktor Rydberg published Little Vigg's Adventure on Christmas Eve in 1871, when a boy is picked up by a "tomte" distributing gifts around the countryside in his sledge drawn by four miniature horses. When Rydberg wrote the poem The Tomte he commissioned a less ugly-looking santa as an illustration from an 18-year-old artist. Jenny Nyström used her father as a model and gave her "tomte" the body of an old Lapplander. She created the image of the modem Swedish santa and as she continued to draw him for 70 years, her "tomte" was firmly established in Swedish Christmas traditions. Her son Curt Nyström Stoopendahl and other artists continued to draw her naturalistic santas while Aina Stenberg Mas Olle's Christmas cards are full of younger more decorative tomtenissar. These "small santas" may sometimes deliver something in the stocking, as a foretaste of the real santa, already on the morning of Christmas Eve.

The Swedish Post receives some 35 000 wish lists and letters addressed to Santa each year. In the past volunteers at the old postal office at the Skansen open air museum wrote the replies but now ten extra staff take care of that at the Post sorting facility at Tomteboda and you can also reach the Swedish Santa through his email at http://www.north.pole.org/

NORWAY

In Norway Santa is called Julenissen and the municipality of Drobak, about 20 miles south of Oslo has decided that it is the real home of julenissen. There are even street warnings signs (left) to prove it. The rea son is likely Tregårdens Christmas House where Eva and Willy Johansen produce and sell santas and gifts all year round. The principal julenisse and local postmaster Morten Gustavsen (Julenissen, P.O.Box 200, 1441 Drobak, Norway or e-mail http//www.telepost.nolsantal) generously says "I do not want to take over from other santas. All santas should be countries' friends."

As a gesture of goodwill, the municipality of Drobak has sent Christmas trees to Japan, Germany and Monaco and the public relations has garnered julenissen interviews in the international press. Julenissen Gustavsen even visited the Osaka Expo wearing a knitted sweater and short pants (for skiing) to distribute gifts to the children and let them taste Norwegian porridge, herring and seven kinds of Christmas cookies.

The Norwegian santa was given a personality and a face by the illustrator Louis Moe in the books about a boy called BurreBusse from 1940. This is a rather stern and serious santa who probably still has a bit of the original gardvord - farm guardian personality. In modern times Alf Proysen's carpenter Andersen has become almost as popular as Santa among the younger kids. The carpenter switches jobs with Santa one Christmas so that Santa is able to stay at home with his family on Christmas Eve and now a Norwegian Christmas is not complete without Proysen story.

ICELAND

Most countries have just one santa but in Iceland there are 13! The thirteen jolasveinar come one by one each day from the morning of December 12 so that they are all gathered on Christmas Day and then disappear one by one in reverse. They have all disappeared by January 5, which happens to be the day elves move houses, according to the old beliefs, and this is always celebrated with bonfires and fireworks displays as a small scale New Years Eve celebration.
The jolasveinar's mother is the terrible monster, Gryla who appeared in the 13th century with a penchant for eating naughty children. She was so feared that the King of Denmark and Iceland even forbade his subjects in 1746 from scarring people by telling them these folk tales.

The jolasveinar love to play tricks and with names like Pottasleikir (pot Ticker) and Gluggagaeiger (window peeper), you can gather each one's specialty. Originally these gnomes only stole and played tricks but they have mellowed with time, so now kids leave their shoe on a window sill and expect a small gift from each and everyone of them. The gifts range from a piece of fruit, candy or even a small toy but if the children have been naughty they may find a potato. In fact the jolasveinar have become a kind of advent calendar, which in the paper form with a big picture and 24 little windows for each day before Christmas, is a very popular tradition in Scandinavian homes.
Today the jolasveinar even have their own internet site http: //www.nyherji.isl-gunnsi /gardarl.htm where you can learn more about them and Jol in Iceland. There is nowadays also a Christmas village at the geothermal greenhouse village at Hveragardi near, Reykjavik where you can meet all the "yuletide lads" in Santa's toy workshop.

Over the years the number of jolasveinar has varied between

8 and 80 and there are at least 90 names for them. Part of the inspiration for these gnomes may well have come from Snow white and the Seven Dwarfs, that was the most popular of the Grimm's fairytales in the 1830s and later becoming even more popular through the Walt Disney film.

Otherwise the oldest Nordic descriptions of a santa-like figure have been preserved from Iceland and refer to conditions in the ninth century. At the time the Ormadr functioned as a kind of farm manger for humans.

DENMARK

Each year pictures from the World Santa Clause Congress in Copenhagen are cabled out to media all over the world. The 4-day conference gathers more than one hundred Santas from all over the world, who meet at Scandinavia's oldest amusement park, Dyrehavsbacken. Here you see the Tunisian Santa with a fez, the three kings (or wise men) from Spain, the two-meter tall German Weihnachtsman and plenty of Danish Julemdn. Although the pictures you see are mostly of the Santas relaxing at the Bellevue beach, they also manage a lot of resolutions, such as the one proclaiming the official address of Santa to be in Greenland.

Santa has old roots in Denmark. The first Nordic "tomte" pictures were drawn by Danish artists in Rome in the 1830s. Many of the Christmas cards, prints, advent calendars and decorations used in the Scandinavian countries were published in Copenhagen and these were the sources of inspiration for many of the Nordic Christmas traditions.

GREENLAND

With so many letters addressed to Santa arriving in Greenland, Peter Williams in Nuuk decided this was a basis for a business. He is now the head Santa of the Santa Clause of Greenland Foundation that franchises santas all over the world. In Sweden there are four official Santas that subscribe to such creeds as never drinking alcohol in the presence of kids, maintaining a certain roundedness of the body and only using their own beard. Peter Williams is also recruiting santa's helpers and got 8 500 in record time in Denmark. He wants "Santa to stand for quality and heartfelt human values linked to the Arctic and especially Greenland" and wants to cooperate with Unicef and the Red Cross.

In Nuuk there is now a gigantic red Danish mailbox and several employed elves. Peter Williams wants to get rid of Santa's "unintelligent ho-ho-ho" and instead produce products that show Santa with his family, friends and animals in clean Arctic surroundings.

In the beginning the Greenland Santa sent a little gift to all children who wrote to him "c/o the North pole, Greenland" but that became too expensive so since 1995 you have to buy a 20 Danish crown postcard to receive Santa's greeting.

THE WORLD

Although many Scandinavians feel that Santa has become Americanized, it is interesting to note that the American Santa as depicted by Coca-Cola's "jolly, white bearded, pot-bellied old chap with cheeks like roses and a nose like a cherry" actually was the creation of the Swedish-American artist, Haddon Sundblom. In the beginning Sundblom used a retired salesman with a face full of happy wrinkles for his "fleshand-blood" Santa, but when his model died he actually used himself as a model.

Scandinavian Press, Issue 4, 1998