Gather ’round your tablets and let me tell you the tale of how scaring a nation of Odin-worshipping farmers and warriors into believers of a bastard child saviour from faraway lands ended up tarting up the winter solstice celebrations, but first, yule probably want me to explain what the hell I am on about… Ha.

Firstly, massive thanks to those who replied to my desperate cry for inspirational input on the socials! It was a close call. However, faced with the choice between writing about cannibalism and yule and solstice, I opted for the latter. Cheers, Durand!

I might save cannibalism for next week, for those seeking alternatives to the traditional Christmas dinner – I bet the calorie density of a human arse is less than that of a serving of crimbo pudding alone. Not that I’d recommend eating either of those, of course.

Interestingly enough, the parents of the Icelandic Yule lads actually did eat human children (presumably fictional lads and children), but that’s neither here nor there, as I don’t know if we can safely assume that a troll is a humanoid creature and, as we all know, cannibalism refers to humans eating other humans.

Right, let’s dive into this.

The Norwegian, Swedish and Danish word for Christmas is ‘jul’. This we can all agree on. In Icelandic, it’s ‘jól’. Yule in ye olde English. It originally stems from the name of the heathen winter solstice celebration; jólablót. ‘Blot’ is the sacrificial spilling of blood of an animal or human. I didn’t really have to do much research on the etymology, as I grew up in the place that saw the last ‘blót’ with a human sacrifice in Norway – heads of the Norse gods they worshipped are to this day displayed inside the church that now sits in the place where they used to perform the blót, with human blood so ingrained in them that it is still visible if you study them up close. Gross. And weird. Like most organised religion, I suppose. I digress.

Anyway, you can read about Mære kyrkje in the Snorri saga Heimskringla, if this has tickled your fancy. Me, I had to translate Heimskringla from Old Norse to Norwegian about 20 years ago and have had my fill. Here’s an article about how king Olaf the Holy beat the heathen king Olve, in Norwegian. Now, if you’re in the market for a far more interesting person of the same name, you can check out the split album True Kings of Norway, by clicking anywhere on this sentence.

So, how did they go from blood sacrifice to carolling and decorating their homes with stars, paper hearts, deformed versions of Santa and his family members and bloody angels?!

Etymologically, jul/yule/jól is believed to be Proto-Germanic, whichever way you spell it. Perhaps we can blame the raping/pillaging vikings for this, perhaps not. Regardless, it is the name of a heathen winter festival that was held either on the winter solstice (the shortest day of the year, leading into longer days and brighter times), or over the course of three days surrounding midwinter night. It appears historians cannot agree on this. My take is that some historians take what’s written in the Snorri Sturlasson sagas as historical facts, whereas others do not. What they can agree on, however, is that it was a heathen festival that has somehow “merged” with Christianity during the Christianisation of Scandinavia between year 900 and 1200.

It also appears most online sources do not know the difference between paganism and heathenry, thus use the terms as if they are interchangeable, so let us just, once and for all, clear this up: They are not. Ha. You can Google this until your heart’s content, I’m not getting into it today. But what we do know is that the Scandinavian yule traditions predate Christianity and its celebration of the birth of Christ.

What sort of traditions are we talking about here? Well, like most other nations, the Scandinavian countries have as many different variations of traditions as there are families. Norway, Sweden and Finland are all fairly lengthy from the south to the north, and narrower in the middle – the climate varies vastly. This has always affected – and continues to affect – diet, fashion choices, political views, infrastructure… you name it. So, just food-wise, Bergen residents do not have the same jule-meal as people in, say, Lillehammer. I’m inclined to think this was the case in the olden days as well.

Anyway, back to yule. (To me, to yule). The celebration of the winter solstice was in many ways a ritual that marked the beginning of the end of the darker period of the year. A feast with the best produce stored from the last autumn harvest, along with cooking up an animal sacrifice made to the gods to secure a good spring, brought the community together. Seeing as it was likely freezing and the microwave was yet to be invented, you can imagine they had to set fire to some of the foodstuffs to avoid the need for a dentist (which, spoiler alert, didn’t exist yet either), which has carried over into the Christmas pudding booze volcano tradition. I do not know of any Scandinavians that are setting fire to their Christmas dinners these days, but judging by what they eat, perhaps they should.

Any gifts were for the gods. The incessant gift-giving came with the three “wise” men of Biblical fame. There might have been the odd wreath, handmade candles or a stray straw yule goat here or there, but the decorations we see today are far from traditional and not so much linked to superstition.

The aforementioned cannibalistic yule lads of Iceland do have some similarities with the Scandinavian nisse (not to be confused with the modern day ‘julenisse’, Saint Nick/Santa Claus); nefarious barn dwellers that were after livestock, punishing naughty children and play pranks on farmers who hadn’t managed to get their shit together before the solstice. Not too different from Krampus, but smaller in size, magical and with no coal for your stocking. An evil hobgoblin dressed in red, if you may.

The nefarious creatures and superstitious decorating likely stems from needing to protect their produce and cured foodstuffs from prying eyes (and mouths) before they were ready. No wonder they were made to look like horrible little trolls. Additionally, the often long and hard winters could take their toll on just about anyone. With no medical knowledge or ways to predict logical weather patterns, superstitions such as warding off evil spirits with a wreath or a goat helped people pull through the tough times. And for those who didn’t, it was fairly easy to blame it on not having completed the seasonal rituals in time.

To finalise, the winter solstice represented a positive turn – a way out of the darkness. This was marked by a feast, with an animal sacrifice and and rituals to celebrate the gifts received from the gods in the past year, something I believe was fairly widespread in pre-Christian times. The lack of reading and writing skills around the days where Christianity thrust itself onto most any unsuspecting nation might help explain why there are so many different versions of what might have actually happened and just how the traditions merged – I suspect most people just shrugged and said ‘ I guess we’re Christians now, eh’ and got back to the grind, not really caring if they mixed a little bloodletting in with their Sunday mass.

I might investigate this further, but if I continue now, I can feel myself getting into dangerous territory. Not today.

By the way, you might be interested to know some Satanist groups celebrate Yule around the same time as the Christian holiday is observed. Contrary to popular belief, though, with no worshipping of deities of any kind. Satanists are secular hedonists – not stupid.

So, to end this on an even happier, ding-dong-merrily-on-high, note, I wish you a pleasant rest of your day, now that you’re armed with some fun new facts to dazzle your co-workers with. If you find yourself surrounded by just too many £20 notes, you can always get yourself a copy of my book – hell, even FOUR of the E-book. See you next Tuesday!