Christmas is a jolly, happy time of year. It’s a time when we catch up with family, eat good food, and have a few adult beverages if that’s your thing. It’s a time when we celebrate the end of a successful year, give gifts to our loved ones, and just generally have a happy time.
Unless you’re in Iceland. Oh, people in Iceland are probably as cheery as most folks around the Christmas holidays – but they are also well-advised to dress properly while out and about because if they venture forth in old clothes on Christmas, they run the risk of being eaten by the Jólakötturinn – the Yule cat!
Most Christmas traditions are warm and jolly; after all, ’tis the season to be merry! However, in the Norse lands — particularly Iceland — folklore takes a darker turn.
The Yule Cat (or Christmas Cat) is a fearsome feline from Icelandic folklore. According to legend, the Yule Cat prowls the countryside during the Christmas season, hunting down people — especially children — who aren’t wearing new clothes. In some versions, it also tracks down mischievous kids and pranksters.
The Yule Cat was said to be enormous, towering over buildings as it stalked the snowy landscape. Children who didn’t receive new clothes were inspected by the cat, and if deemed lazy, they were devoured. In some versions, the Yule Cat spares the people but steals their food and gifts instead.
That seems a bit harsh, but folk tales of this sort seem to have one thing in common: An enticement for kids to behave themselves, to not be lazy, and to wear their best clothes when going over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house. Of course, there’s always the chance that a more 21st-century version of the Yule cat may just steal your Christmas cookies, pies, and presents instead.
But are you willing to take that chance?
Over the years, I’ve read a lot of the old Norse sagas, including the Prose Edda and a lot of the other legendary tales; some of them, I would caution the reader, are written as poetry and they lose some things in translation between old Scandinavian and English. But those stories, while stirring, are full of fearsome beasts, gods, monsters, berserkers, and more; great reading, but it’s easy to see how a culture that comes up with the world-serpent Jörmungandr, the giant wolf Fenrir or frost giants wouldn’t flinch at a cat that eats poorly-dressed holiday celebrants. Harsh lands tend to produce tough people with great legends of peril, and it’s hard to find a harsher land than Iron Age Scandinavia.
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The Yule Cat legend, though, doesn’t go quite that far back, apparently having gotten started during the Dark Ages – again, a difficult time. In 1932, the Icelandic poet Jóhannes úr Kötlum immortalized the Yule Cat with these words:
You know the Christmas cat
– that cat is very large
We don’t know where he came from
nor where he has gone
He opened his eyes widely
glowing both of them
it was not for cowards
to look into them
And the finale:
Everybody knew he hunted men
But didn’t care for mice.
So, yeah, Merry Christmas – and if you’re wearing old clothes, keep a sharp eye peeled for cats.
