Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Question: Beginning on December 12, where will 13 naughty children torment your sheep, lick your spoons, and steal your roast lamb—all in the name of Christmas?

Answer: Iceland, home of the Yule Lads.

One mysterious figure slipping into your home while you sleep isn’t enough for Iceland, where everything is more epic. There, children await 13 visitors on consecutive nights, all dressed somewhat like Santa, but decidedly unlike him in most other ways.

For nearly a millennium, Iceland has been telling stories of “hidden people,” a mystical race of elves who live in the hills strewn with lava rock. One of the oldest stories is of the Yule Lads, the prankster children of ogress Grýla, who turns them loose to roam the countryside each winter. In legend, they would steal into farm villages one at a time to torment the locals. One snatched up all the butter, another irritated the sheep. Maybe the most idiosyncratic was the one who ran house to house licking all the spoons. There seemed to be as many Yule Lads as towns and villages, with over 80 named across the years.

Not all the tales were nice. In some versions, the Yule Lads were capricious killers and in others, they were accompanied by a giant Yule Cat who ate people not wearing new clothes on Christmas Eve. (New clothes were a sign of payment for farm workers who had completed their fall chores, so avoiding getting eaten was very motivational.)

As Christianity came to prominence, many of the old tales dwindled in importance, but writer Jóhannes úr Kötlum rekindled the Yule Lad story in the 1932 poem “Jólasveinarnir” in his book of Christmas lore. Kötlum codified the (non-murderous) 13 Yule Lads that are now universally accepted and established the rules of the tradition.

Since then, children have laid out empty shoes on their windowsills in the days leading up to Christmas, in hopes of getting goodies. Kids who really get into the tradition may leave out specific offerings for their favorite Yule Lad, including spoons full of cake batter for you-know-who. Good children wake to find treats in their shoes the next morning. And if they are unworthy? A rotten potato.

In theory, getting a potato too many days in a row ought to be so instructive that a human lad could turn his behavior around in time to still earn a few treats before Christmas arrives and the Yule Lads disappear for another year.

Meet the Yule Lads

• Sheepcote Clod wants to drink sheep’s milk but his knees are too stiff to let him bend down, so he just irritates the animals instead.


• Gully Gawk waits in a gully till farmers are asleep then sneaks into their barns to skim all the cream off their milk.


• Shorty is the most diminutive lad, and he pops up in kitchens to eat whatever crumbs remain in baking pans.


• Spoon Licker prefers to clean off long-handled wooden spoons, and his pickiness leaves him underweight.


• Pot Scraper sits right in the middle of the floor eating leftovers straight from the pot.


• Bowl Licker hides under beds waiting for someone to set down a wooden bowl, which he licks clean.


• Door Slammer resents well-rested folk and runs around slamming doors to keep them up all night.


• Curd Gobbler loves skyr, milk curd, so much he hurries from pantry to pantry gorging on any he finds.


• Sausage Swiper steals as many sausages as possible, draping strands around himself to keep his hand free for stealing more.


• Window Peeper thinks of peering into houses as window shopping and occasionally helps himself to what he sees.


• Doorway Sniffer pokes his huge nose into homes just for the scent of Christmas cakes.


• Meat Hook hovers on the ceiling ready to lower a hook to snatch roast lamb, the once-traditional meal of the 23rd.


• Candle Stealer ruins Christmas Eve by sneaking up on children and snatching their candles to eat. (That’s a way to really burn the roof of your mouth!)

Enter the realm of the Yule Lads—and discover other quirky Icelandic traditions—when you join O.A.T. for Untamed Iceland.