Christmas Creep: The Yule Goat

Finnish Depictions

I've blogged on this guy before, but not in the context of of the Icelandic theme that I've had going this year.  This is another extant member of the family the dreaded Icelandic ogress Gryla.  It is thought to have pagan Germanic origins, but I wonder a bit about this.  First, a great deal of Germanic traditions that show up in the Icelandic family, like Krampas or Sinterklass or even Icelandic Yule Lads don't have any real exact equivalent in Finland (which is a non-Indo-European speaking place, and older than the Germanic languages of the area)--this one does.  So much so, in fact, that it appears, at least to me anyway, that the Yule Goat originated with the Finns, or possibly even the Saami people of the far north--one of the oldest population of modern humans in Europe.

2006 Swedish town Yule Goat in wicker.

In Finnish lore, this another of those beasts that cooks and eats naughty children, also those who do not work for the sustainability of the community--slag-offs basically.  Sometimes depicted as a giant that stalks the longest night of the year (Winter Solstice), also depicted as a hoarder of human bones.  This creatures appetite for stewed children in Finnish tradition might explain it's correlation to Gryla in Icelandic lore, since she shares the same taste for exactly the same dish.

It's function in Germanic traditions appears to be related to the English version of wassailing and has a function that appears a bit like the Halloween tradition here in the US, when Yule Goat costumes were donned as folks went door to door singing and playing pranks on people.  With this sort of behavior, one would think that the Yule Goat would be linked to Loki, the great Norse trickster God, however his pantheistic equivalent is actually Thor.  Strangely enough, in modern times this Christmas effigy is usually made of straw and it treated like a modern day "wicker man" and is burned on or after Christmas.

Modern day burning Yule Goat

I have no idea if this tradition has managed to "travel" to other parts of the world, but we inherited some wicker Christmas ornaments from Jamaica, and sure enough there is a goat amongst them!

Our Jamaican "Yule Goat" taken this evening.

Yule Cat has a go at the Yule Goat!!