~angelic knight 133~

You lost a sock, heard an unexplained sound at night, felt someone was sitting on your chest while you were sleeping - all of that might be the work of Domovoy, the Slavic domestic spirit (East Slavic in particular; West and South Slavic people also have domestic spirits, but I don't know much about them, unfortunately).

Keep in mind that the traditions can be slightly different depending on the region/village/individual family or time period.

The name comes from ‘dom’ = house, so Domovoy is basically The One Who Lives in the House. This is the most generic name, in different regions or individual households there might be some other names. For example, Hozyaeen (master/owner) or Dedooshka (Grandpa). The last one has to do with the belief that this spirit associates with souls of dead ancestors (it´s not some particular relative's soul but rather a generalized idea of an ancestor).

Unlike Scandinavian Tomten/Nisse Domovoy primarily lives in the house or apartment; yards, barns and bath houses have their own spirits - Ovinnik and Bannik. Domovoy can live in any more or less private place in the house: behind the fireplace (the traditional Russian fireplace - pech - is quite complex so there are some places to hide behind or under it), in the attic, etc, though sometimes it is believed he (and it is almost always he) lives in a broom aka venik.

The way he looks varies but generally he is more or less small, has disheveled hair and is dressed in average peasant clothes. 

Domovoy functions as a typical domestic spirit - he takes care of the house and brings prosperity to the family in exchange for some small sacrifices (usually milk and some food - and some elderly people, mostly in the countryside, still leave such gifts for their Domovoy every night, though it is becoming increasingly rare).

Usually Domovoy is a bachelor, but in some places he may be believed to have a family, though female Domovoy as a separate being is extremely rare.

He is typically seen as helpful though he might play tricks on the family. But there is an interesting tendency: in the North he is usually strict but just and dedicated to the household, and in the South he is more capricious and demanding and is more likely to prank you than help you (this is also true for some other folklore spirits, for example, Lesheej, the forest spirit).

It´s Tomten aka Nisse.

Domestic spirits are quite common across cultures, so it´s not surprising that there are such creatures in the Scandinavian folk tradition. 

The names differ in different parts of the region, but essentially it's the same character. Tomten derives from ‘tomt’ - Swedish for ‘site, house’, so Tomten is literally ‘the house creature’. Nisse is a little more complicated. The most plausible version is that it comes from St. Nikolas (Nisse can be a short form of Nils/Nikolas), as these spirits are associated with Christmas which happens shortly after St. Nikolas´s day. Then there’s a version saying it comes from Nixie - Old Norse water monster, which doesn't fit the house spirit in question. 

It's a small human-like creature in a red hat and grayish clothes, usually with a white beard. They live in a barn or in a basement, sometimes in a tree near a house, but it depends. It is believed that Tomten/Nisse brings prosperity to hard-working people and helps them around the house, but punishes negligent housekeepers by injuring their stock, messing with the harvest and sometimes even setting the house on fire.

The hat is red for a reason, actually. In Indo-European cultures red hats are associated with evil spirits (think about Red Riding Hood, the story can be interpreted either as about losing virginity or sending the spirit of an already dead Grandma to the Other World - for this I'm relying on Alexandra Barkova).

One other interesting detail - Tomte/Nisse is good at playing the violin and can teach you to play in return for a gray sheep.

Illustrations are by Jenny Eugenia Nyström