Before the plane touched down on Rovaniemi’s snow-covered runway, he shuffled down the aisle, Santa Claus, handing out sweets. The message is already clear above the clouds: Santa Claus is at home in Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland. Other places in Greenland, Sweden or the USA may make similar claims, but in Finland they are absolutely certain: Santa Claus’ official hometown is Rovaniemi right on the Arctic Circle.
The city advertises itself with this claim, and Santa Claus has had an office there since 1985. Not only that: There is an official Santa Claus Village with dozens of attractions such as the Santa Claus post office, reindeer sleigh tours or the igloo hotel.
In the “Santa Claus Village” the white-bearded man, who is called Joulupukki in Finland, welcomes children from all over the world all year round in red and listens to their wishes. Conveniently, the attentive parents are often present. You can even book package tours under titles like “Home visit to Santa Claus”, and not only at Christmas time.
At the post office, Santa’s elves, the Tonttus, stamp letters and cards with an official Arctic Circle stamp. If you can’t make it up north yourself, write to Santa Claus – he receives half a million letters from children every year.
On Christmas Eve, Finnish households traditionally serve the cloves-spiced Christmas ham called Joulukinkku, usually a ten-kilo chunk that easily lasts through the holidays and saves families from the stress of the holiday kitchen. The Finns take it easy anyway: Before the gift giving and the feast, everyone goes to the sauna together – a typical Christmas custom.
The Finnish Santa keeps up with the times. He has a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, and in his village there is a webcam in the middle of the main square. In the course of the gender debate, there is now also a Mrs. Santa Claus, who has moved into her own hut in the reindeer resort this year. Why Mrs. Santa Claus, her official name, did not move into her husband’s house remains her secret. Stefan Weissenborn
Sweden’s winters are long, cold and dark. The Swedes meet this with a wonderful tradition: a festival of light, the Lucia Festival. It is always celebrated on December 13, the feast day of Saint Lucy. Until 1752, before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in Sweden, it was the shortest day of the year.
The festival is a procession that takes place in every village, in every town, symbolizing the hope for the end of the dark days. She is led by a white-robed Lucia, who brings light into the darkness with a crown of burning candles on her head.
Her entourage also wear white robes and hold candles, and they sing Christmas carols together. A Lucia concert in a church that is only lit by candlelight is particularly atmospheric – one of the most beautiful pre-Christmas experiences that you can experience in Europe, goosebumps are guaranteed!
During the Advent season, you can also see unusual animals all over Sweden: the Yule goat, a woven creature made of straw, which either adorns every Swedish household as a miniature or – in a medium-sized variant – stands in every second garden. Sweden’s largest Julbock is a 13-metre-tall, 3.5-ton giant made of straw that has been erected in the town of Gävle every year since 1966 and is now under police protection to keep it from being burned by arsonists, which has happened several times in recent years.
The Julbock stands for the annually recurring fertility of the earth. It has its roots in the Germanic belief in gods. Over the centuries, it has become a symbol of Christmas and it is hard to imagine the Swedish winter without it.
The ice hotel in Sweden is much more recent. The first in the world was built 30 years ago in the small town of Jukkasjärvi, 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, composed of blocks of ice weighing several tons that were sawn out of a nearby river. In the meantime, other countries have stolen the idea, the original is still in Swedish Lapland and is rebuilt every winter.
So that the ice hotel does not melt, the inside temperature is constantly between minus five and minus seven degrees. Guests sleep on ice beds where they can snuggle up in thermal sleeping bags and reindeer skins. There is a real sauna for warming up – fortunately it is not made of ice but of wood. Sonke Krueger
Anyone who has ever baked a gingerbread house knows how time-consuming it can be. The cooled pastry roof quickly sags and the walls, which are glued with icing, collapse. Making a whole village out of the pastry is really tedious.
In Bergen, Norway, this effort is made year after year, baking and building the largest gingerbread town in the world – made of hundreds of miniature houses, palaces, castles, stave churches, harbors and train stations, decorated with battlements and windows. There are tiny trains, cars and boats, figures, trees and a merry-go-round, all made of gingerbread, whose intense scent wafts through the streets.
For 30 years, schoolchildren, companies and volunteers have been working on a new miniature world called “Pepperkakebyen” since autumn, supported by architects because of the tricky statics. The amazing miniature village can be visited until December 31st.
In total, there are more than 500 of these delicious mini buildings on 400 square meters in the middle of Bergen – in the Xhibition shopping center. The smell makes you hungry, but nibbling is forbidden, there are gingerbread shops in the shopping mall for that. At the beginning of January, the splendor of the gingerbread is shredded.
A lot of handicrafts are made in Norway at Christmas time anyway, such as tree decorations. A traditional Norwegian Christmas tree is often decorated with small national flags and paper chains, especially with red and white paper baskets, called Julecurvers, which are shaped like a little heart. This pretty decoration actually comes from Denmark, the storyteller Hans Christian Andersen is said to have invented it around 1860.
Norwegians don’t see it that narrowly – if they like Christmas traditions from other countries, they simply adopt them. That’s why there are two Santa Clauses for the children: the imported Santa Claus, who climbs down the chimney, and the local Christmas gnome Julenissen, who stands in front of the door and gets a pudding. According to legend, the friendly guy with the bumpy nose lives in the stable and protects the house and yard all year round.
In order for luck to last, a pinch of superstition must not be missing. Many Norwegians therefore have a bizarre custom for Christmas: They hide mop and broom in the house so that witches don’t look in, swing on brooms and spread the good luck. Kira Hanser
The Christmas tree is a German invention, but without the Danes, the nationwide supply of Europe with the coniferous tree would be at risk: They made the Nordmann fir the ultimate Christmas tree and an export hit.
A good 100 million specimens thrive in Denmark’s fir tree plantations, ten million are cut down every year and sold abroad, around half to Germany. The Nordmann firs that stay in Denmark are often decorated with real candles and the Danish flag – which is conveniently red and white, so it’s perfect for Christmas.
Christmas elves (Danish: Nisser) are also a popular holiday decoration, either in the Christmas tree or elsewhere in the home. Especially in the country there is still the custom to put a bowl of rice pudding in the attic for the eater. This is the favorite food of the elves – it should put them in a good mood so that they don’t become a nuisance in the new year.
Not only the elves like rice pudding: Risalamande is the Danes’ favorite Christmas dessert, rice pudding with cherry sauce, in which a whole almond is hidden. The person from the party who finds the almond in their portion usually gets an additional gift.
Gløgg is a popular drink in drink-loving Denmark. The hot red wine, seasoned with cinnamon, cloves, lemon zest, cardamom and ginger, flows freely in living rooms and at Christmas markets. Since Gløgg contains less alcohol than German mulled wine, the risk of a headache is rather low.
Particularly atmospheric are the Christmas market in the open-air museum Den Gamle By in Aarhus (with Christmas decorations from the 17th to 20th centuries), the Nyhavn market in Copenhagen (right on the water) and Petersjul in Denmark’s oldest town Ribe. Based on an old children’s book, it’s staged in the style of an 1860s Christmas party, with period costumes, square concerts, and traditional stalls serving specially seasoned Christmas sausages.
Anyone who is in Denmark during Advent and sends Christmas mail from there should use a Christmas stamp (in addition to the regular postage), the proceeds of which go to children’s homes. The Danes invented the Julemærke in 1904, and since then it has appeared every November, each time designed by a different artist.
This year’s issue is a sheet of 44 stamps for 75 crowns (equivalent to ten euros), showing a port city with a sailing ship and Christmas elves. The brands’ motto is Hjem til Jul (Christmas at Home) – it fits perfectly in this strange phase of the pandemic, when we are longing to finally see all our loved ones again. Sonke Krueger
During the Advent season, which is otherwise rather contemplative, rowdy trolls roam the country in Iceland. Their names sound almost menacing: one is called window glotzer, another door slot sniffer, there is also a meat claw. From December 12th, 13 trolls climb out of their cave in the Esja mountains one after the other, in Iceland they are called Jólasveinar (Christmas fellows).
For almost two weeks they sneak around the houses as soon as it gets dark. That’s not a problem in Iceland in December, after all it’s the darkest time of the year, with only four hours of daylight a day.
In the past, these 13 trolls, all of them sons of the even grumpier troll woman Grýla, were considered to scare children (the little ones should stay at home after dark), today the trolls’ bad manners have improved significantly: they knock, shake, whisper only on the doors, play a few harmless pranks, but also bring rewards – depending on the good behavior of the visitors.
That’s why Icelandic children hopefully put shoes on the windowsill on each of the 13 evenings. If you’ve been good, you’ll find a gift in it the next morning. Unfortunately, if you were naughty, you only get a wrinkled potato. That’s pretty smart parentingly, if a bit bizarre, but the long, dark winter has made for idiosyncratic stories for centuries.
Belief in nature spirits is deeply rooted, with 50 percent of Icelanders finding it not unlikely that trolls dwell in the lava rocks and hills of their island. So it’s only logical that it’s not the Christ Child, Santa Claus or Santa Claus who brings the presents, but the aforementioned cave trolls. Practical for Iceland’s children: they receive presents 13 times.
Another tradition takes some getting used to. While elsewhere in Europe it smells like cinnamon and gingerbread, before Christmas in Iceland it stinks badly – from cooking pots in gardens and on balconies there is a pungent smell of ammonia. That’s the signature smell of kaest skata, rotten ray, which is traditionally served on December 23 in rural parts of the island (in Reykjavík, tenants who cooked rotten ray have already been evicted).
The fish has no bladder; the urea accumulates in the meat, so it’s only edible if you let it ferment and then boil the wilted meat until it becomes flabby. Taste: strong-spicy. It’s an honor to be invited to a rotten ray dinner, but Icelanders don’t take offense if you only eat the side dishes like potatoes and turnips.
On Christmas Eve, however, things get more contemplative in Iceland: the day is guaranteed free of trolls and rays. At the festival there is then a lot of smoked lamb, snow grouse, flatbread and mondlu tauture, rice pudding. Kira Hanser
There’s still some time until Christmas. Nevertheless, the first few are already getting nervous, starting to stash gifts, while others are already planning the decorations. It’s great that there are definitely enough Christmas trees this year. The bad weather has made them sprout vigorously.
Source: WORLD / Thomas Vedder
This article was first published in December 2021.