The Creatures of Yuletide: The Jultomten
“Midwinter’s nightly frost is hard —
Brightly the stars are beaming;
Fast asleep is the lonely yard,
All, at midnight, are dreaming.
Clear is the moon, and the snow-drifts shine,
Glistening white, on fir and pine,
Covers on rooflets making.
None but the Tomte is waking.”
“Tomten”, Viktor Rydberg
We all know Christmas is a magical time. I’m not joking, Christmas is literally a time of magic. Because of the pagan Winter Solstice celebrations that Christians absorbed into their holiday, the holiday season is a time when multiple creatures, sprites and monsters can roam through the Earth into our homes. Some are peaceful, some are terrifying. Santa is the most popular and modern of these, having roots in the Yule Father himself, Odin. In my last post I talked about the Yule Goat and his connections to the older pagan traditions. Today, I will talk about some holiday sprites that used to travel with him during Christmas time, but later came to replace him almost entirely as a gift-giver in Scandinavian tradition. I’m talking about the Tomte and the Tomtar.
Quick note, these sprites have many names depending on the country, so for convenience sake, I will use the Swedish name and call them Tomte, singular, and Tomtar, plural.
The Tomtar are dwarf-like beings from Scandinavian lore. They are often described as little old men, three feet high, with a long white beard, wearing grey, brown or navy clothes with traditional boots and sporting a bright red cap on their heads.
The name Tomte derives from Swedish word “tomt,” or plot of land, and it means “homestead man”. This reflects their original role as household spirits, similar to the Roman Penates or Di Penates, household deities invoked most often in domestic rituals. The Tomtar were believed to be ancestral spirits of the first farmer to have worked on that plot of land. They were mischievous spirits, responsible for the protection and welfare of a farmstead. They acted more at night, where they were out of sight.
They protected and guarded the house, the properties of the house, the children and the farm animals, especially the much-valued horses. They would work hard to protect the farm, expecting only two things in return, respect, and a bowl of Christmas Porridge with a generous dollop of butter. They often slept under the floorboards during spring and summer and started waking up around the winter solstice. The Julgröt or Christmas porridge was an offer of trust and respect to the Tomte of the household, with butter being a luxury, consumed only on special occasions. It was their payment for the hard work.
As expected from any imp-like creature from European folklore, they can be quite dangerous if their demands are not met. A story tells of a servant girl, that jokingly, hid the butter at the bottom of the bowl. He didn’t kill the girl if this is what you’re thinking, but after not finding the butter, he became so enraged that he slaughtered their best cow. After learning his mistake, he stole a neighbor’s cow to give to the family, as an astonishment for his mistake. I very curious how this played out in the next day 😅
The Tomte is a mischievous spirit, and easily irritated. If you managed on offended him in any way, he could play all kinds of pranks such as binding all cows’ tails together, turning objects upside down or breaking things. Maids or farm workers swearing, dirty outhouses and stables, or not treating creatures well are all things that would incur his disapproval.
Having a Tomte in your farm was a good sign. Clean and orderly homes or farms were an indication that a Tomte spirit resided there. This was, until the Christians arrived and denounced them as demons and false gods. In a 14th century decree by Saint Birgitta of Vadstena warned against “tompta gudhi” or “Tomte gods”. All their worst characteristics were amplified, and instead of pleasing the Tomte, it became your duty as a Christian to lure these evil spirits out. If you were a farmer that was doing far better than the others, your competitors could accuse you of a having a Tomte on your farm, doing "ungodly" work and stealing from the neighbors. This could lead to accusations of witchcraft during the Inquisitions.
The once friendly dwarf-like sprites became evil heathen spirits. In "Tomten", a poem by swedish novelist Viktor Rydberg, describes well all the solitariness that these creatures must felt during these times. In the poem, a Tomte is alone and awake on Christmas night.
This poem along with illustrations from Jenny Nyström saved the public image from the Tomtar. What really captured the imagination were the accompanying illustrations. Nyström’s illustrations offered a new kind of Tomte, a mix between Tomte, Santa Claus and the Yule Goat, who traditionally delivered presents to children in Swedish folklore.
This resulted in a shift in Tomte’s persona. Influenced by the emerging Father Christmas and Santa Claus, a new gift-giver Tomte was born, the Jultomten in Sweden and Julenisse in Norway, who would visit children accompanied by the classic Yule Goat. Later he would steal the goat’s job as a Christmas gift-giver.
Jenny Nyström became one of Sweden’s most productive painters, producing hundreds of illustrations for Christmas cards and magazines. She was able to combine Swedish folklore with uplifting images that appealed to people of all ages. Her Jultomten had a family and nissar, helpers.
Thanks to commercialism, the Jultomten became more and more like the American Santa Claus over the years, as the Jultomten became a single jolly old men in a red suit delivering gifts to children. However, differences still exist between these two figures.
When children write to Father Christmas in Sweden they write to Tomte, not Santa.
The Jultomte lives in a forest nearby.
He doesn't come down the chimney at night, but through the front door, delivering the presents directly to the children, just like the Yule Goat did;
Before he hands over presents he asks, Finns det några snälla barn här? (Are there any good children here?),
He is not overweight;
If he rides a sleigh drawn by reindeer, instead of just walking around with his sack, his reindeers don't fly;
In Sweden, Denmark and Norway some still put out a bowl of porridge for him on Christmas Eve.
The use of the word Tomte in Swedish is now somewhat ambiguous. Often when one speaks of Jultomten (definite article) or Tomten (definite article) one is referring to the more modern version, while if one speaks of Tomtar (plural) or Tomtarna (plural, definite article) one could also likely be referring to the traditional domestic spirits.
In Christmas cards and decorations you still can found the little men from Jenny Nyström's illustrations.
