Santa and Tomten

In Sweden, Santa is called Tomten (sometimes Jul Tomten), which literally translates to Christmas Brownie.  Tomte is the singular and in Swedish adding an ‘n’ usually makes it ‘the’ so Tomten is ‘the brownie’.  As another note, the literal translation of Father Christmas can also be read as “Father in the hat”.

In Scandinavian mythology, Tomten is a brownie that lives on farms and helps out with chores such as cleaning of the cow sheds or sorting hay.  They were offended by careless or rude farmers such as those who mistreated livestock or swore.  Farmers would leave a small bowl of porridge for him, with a dab of butter on top, on Christmas night.

Those who offended him or didn’t give him porridge (or forgot the butter) could be punished by a whack to the ear, theft of hay or livestock, killing or driving off of livestock (an odd punishment – if you mistreat your livestock the Tomte will murder it to punish you, seems like the livestock get the short end of the stick in that one…) or ruining the famers profitability.  They would also perform mischief if offended, like tying cows tails together (again with the livestock abuse),  breaking things or turning objects upside down.

The tomte was is depicted as being a small, elderly man – usually a few inches tall with a full beard in traditional famers clothes.  Common depictions focus on the big hat, beard and nose:

In Sweden and many of the Nordic countries the original Christmas mythology had the Yule Goat as the deliverer of presents.  The Yule Goat was said to arrive on Christmas Eve and knock on the doors of homes to hand out presents.  This was eventually replaced by the idea of Tomten delivering the presents when treated nicely.   The presents were traditionally delivered to the door and often travelled with a pig.

The Yule Goat could be from the old mythology (Thor’s chariot was pulled by two goats).  It was believed that objects made from straw or rough wood could be called the yule goat.  In the 19^th century the Yule Goat became the giver of gifts and was replaced by the end of the 19^th Century by Tomten.

Sweden still celebrate with a straw goat Christmas decorations and the Gävle Goat, a giant straw goat erected in the central square of Gävle:

Yule Goat

Gävle goats are built by two competing groups in Gävle, the School of Vasa and the Natural Science Club.  Most years the goat is vandalized or burnt down, often in an inventive way and despite fire protection, police and National Guard.  There’s an interesting article on Wikipedia that gives a time line of the goat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat  (the weird %C3%A4 is due to the ä which doesn’t work well on English keyboards).  Essentially it has been destroyed 17 times up to 2013, mostly by burning, but it has been kicked to pieces, hit by a car and the smaller Natural Science Club goat has been thrown in the river a few times.  Some of the more memorable ones were in 1985 where it was burnt down despite being surrounded by a 2m high fence and guarded by security guards and the Gävle infantry regiment, 1987 where it has a fireproofing coat added and was still burnt down, 1988 where people were able to bet on whether the goat would be destroyed and in 2013 it was burnt down by a burning arrow fired by people dresses Santa and a Gingerbread man.  The goat survived three attempts at burning it last year, any bets on it surviving this year?

Commercialization, Christianity and Western influence has led to Jultomten looking more and more like the traditional Santa and has replaced the Jule Goat.  They still retain some original feature though – he doesn’t live in the North Pole (maybe because Nordic people are close enough to check…), he doesn’t come down the chimney and he isn’t overweight.  They also don’t have the flying reindeer (although the Western Santa is becoming more common) and people often leave a bowl of porridge and butter out for him instead of milk and cookies.

According to Wikipedia the word tomte is now a little ambiguous - jultomten or tomten refer to the modern tomte and tomtar or tomtarna (plurals) refer to the traditional one.