Tag: swedish

Advent Calendar – Dec 22: Tomten

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 22. Today’s word is ‘Tomten‘ – who is the Swedish equivalent of Santa Claus.

Around the world, Santa is based on the mythology of St Nikolas – the Greek/Turkish patron saint who’s legend morphed in the USA from the Dutch immigrants’ Sinterklaas to the jolly figure who rewards good children that we see today.

The Swedish symbol of Tomten is partially based on St Niklas and the American depiction of Santa Claus. However, he is also based on a goat and a mythical sprite.

Let’s travel back to rural Sweden hundreds of years ago. Here, in the countryside, Tomten was a kind of sprite (hob, gnome, pixie) who lived on the farm and made sure that the farm had good luck.

Tomten was described as a little man, dressed in sackcloth and with a beard. He usually lived in the barn and was shy, mischievous, and irritable – and also vengeful. To keep Tomten happy, the farmer would leave out rice porridge for him to eat – a food that became known as ‘tomtegröt’ and that is still eaten for Christmas breakfast in Sweden today.

With industrialization in the late 1800’s, Sweden started to become inspired by the German St Nicholas, and in modern minds he merged with the rural sprite to become ‘jultomte’ – the gift-bearing sprite.

Popular Christmas cards by Swedish artist Jenny Nyström depicted this new version of Tomten in 1874 and strongly influenced the Swedish way of seeing jultomte. He was dressed in red hat, with a fluffy white beard. He is also seen to have many little helpers – known as ‘tomtenissar’ (a kind of elf).

And in 1881, a poem by Viktor Rydberg called ‘Tomten’ strongly cemented his transformation and associated the figure with mid-winter and Christmas time.

Prior to this concept of Jultomte/Tomten, gifts were brought in Sweden by the Christmas goat. Straw goats are still a part of Christmas decorations in Sweden and can be found hanging in Christmas trees or standing at the foot of the tree.

In Sweden today, Tomten arrives on Christmas Eve, usually in the late afternoon. He delivers gifts to families, usually with the introduction of ‘Ho, Ho, Ho are there any good children here?’

Strangely, he always seems to arrive just when a member of the family (often dad) has gone out to the shops or gone for a walk.

Advent Calendar Dec 20: Mistel

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 20. Today’s word is ‘mistel‘ which translates as ‘mistletoe’.

Kissing under the mistletoe is a tradition in many countries and outside Central Station in Stockholm, there is an enormous one to pucker up under.

But do you know the origin of the tradition?

Well, one of the theories is that it comes from Norse mythology in a story about the god Baldur. In the story, Baldur’s mother Frigg casts a powerful magic to make sure that no plant grown on earth could be used as a weapon against her son. The one plant the spell does not reach is the mistletoe, as it does not grow out of the earth, but out of a tree’s branches. The scheming Loki, upon learning this, makes a spear out of mistletoe — the spear that would eventually kill Baldur. 

In many tellings, Frigg then declares the mistletoe to be a symbol of love after her son’s death and promises to kiss anyone who passes underneath it. 

Advent Calendar – Dec 19: Julklappsrim

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 19. Today’s word is ‘Julklappsrim‘ which translates as ‘Christmas present rhyme’

If you receive a gift at Christmas time,

You’ll find in Sweden that it comes with a rhyme.

The packets are wrapped, the present to hide

And a poem describes all the contents inside.

You see, Swedes write poems on the label

Sometimes direct, sometimes a fable.

They sit in a workshop creating their verse,

It needs to be brief, but not at all terse.

The poem is read, the packet ripped open

And you see what you got, but it still leaves you hopin’

For a phone or a trip or a book about crime,

Wrapped up with a Swedish Christmas rhyme.

Advent Calendar – Dec 18: Skumtomte

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 18. Today’s word is ‘Skumtomte‘ which translates as ‘Marshmallow Santa’.

January is a month when it is often jam-packed at gyms up and down Sweden. This is usually due to the amount of food, snacks, and alcohol consumed over the Christmas and New Year period. The festive season is also one of the times of year when a lot of sugar and sweets are consumed.

One of the most popular sweets in yuletide Sweden is the ‘skumtomte’ – the marshmallow Santa. The skumtomte is traditionally pink and white and strawberry flavoured.

Thanks to the wonders of product development, new limited flavours have appeared in recent years: apple and cinnamon, blueberry, mint and gingerbread being some examples.

They have been manufactured since 1934, and every year over 194,000,000 are consumed in Sweden and Finland. It seems like it wouldn’t be Christmas without a skumtomte.

Other sweet things that Swedes eat around Christmas are:

  • Ischoklad – ‘ice chocolate’ – chocolate with coconut fat in tiny cupcake forms
  • Ris a la Malta – a cold rice dessert with cream, vanilla and mandarines
  • Risgrynsgröt – rice porridge with sugar, cinnamon and milk
  • Knäck – butterscotch
  • Kola – toffee
  • Fudge – fudge
  • Marsipangris – marzipan pig
  • Lussekatt – saffron bun
  • Polkagris – Candy cane
  • Chokladtryffel – chocolate truffle
  • Dadlar – dates
  • Fikon – figs
  • Pepparkaka – ginger biscuits
  • Gröna kulor – marmalade balls
  • Aladdin and/or Paradis – popular boxes of chocolates

So, get eating – the gym can wait until 2025!

Advent Calendar – Dec 17: Årets Julklapp

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 17. Today’s word is ‘Årets julklapp‘ which translates as ‘Christmas present of the year.’

Every year, Sweden’s trade research institute nominates an item that is the ‘Christmas present of the year’. This item should have sold in large quantities and/or represent current trends in Swedish society. 

The first item to be granted this status was in 1988 and it was the baking machine. Since then, various items have been the CD player, VR glasses, the tablet, the spike mat, the book, the food home delivery service, the robot hoover, the woolly hat and the wok.

So this year, what is it? 

Unisex perfume.

Advent Calendar – Dec 16: Julbord

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 16. Today’s word is ‘Julbord‘ which literally translates as Christmas table.

The word ‘smörgåsbord’ (buffet) is one of the words from the Swedish language to have the biggest international reach. The ‘julbord’ or Christmas table is the ‘smörgåsbord’ that is traditionally eaten in homes and restaurants on Christmas Eve – the day Swedes celebrate Christmas.

In the lead up to Christmas, organisations often take their employees out somewhere for a ‘julbord’.

The ‘julbord’ is an interesting concept – a potpourri of dishes, hot and cold. Not all Swedes enjoy everything on the table, but the dishes still have to be present in the name of tradition.

So, what’s on the Swedish ‘julbord’? Here are some common savoury dishes:

  • Julskinka – Christmas ham
  • Inlagd sill – pickled herring of various sorts
  • Köttbullar – Swedish meatballs
  • Prinskorvar – cocktail sausages
  • Janssons frestelse – potato and anchovy gratin called Jansson’s temptation
  • Gravad lax – cured spiced salmon
  • Kallrökt lax – cold-smoked salmon
  • Varmrökt lax – warm-smoked salmon
  • Kalvsylta – jellied veal
  • Knäckebröd och ost – crispbread and cheese
  • Sillsallad – herring salad
  • Lutfisk – whitefish in lye
  • Dopp i grytan – ‘dip in the pot’ – bread dipped in the broth that the meat is cooked in
  • Cabbage of various colours – most commonly red
  • Vörtbröd – Christmas bread flavoured with wort
  • Julost – Christmas Edam cheese
  • Revbensspjäll – spare ribs
  • Ägghalvor – halved boiled eggs topped with shrimp or caviar

The ‘julbord’ is a banquet, and its history dates back hundreds of years. Around the country there are regional variants to the standard dishes. For example, in county Skåne, they often add eel, and in Bohuslän they add ‘äggost’ – egg cheese! Many regions around Sweden have brown beans and different local sausages on the their Christmas buffet.

All of this food is traditionally washed down with beer, julmust, and snaps.

You have to be careful not to overindulge, if possible, because afterwards comes coffee and dessert. A traditional dessert is called Ris a la Malta, which is fluffy rice in whipped cream and tangerines. At Christmas tables organised in restaurants, they normally have a ‘gottebord’ which is another smörgåsbord consisting solely of sweets and desserts. Common contents are toffee, fudge, gingerbread biscuits, marzipan, ‘lussekatter’, dried fruits, cheese, and chocolates.

Advent Calendar – Dec 15: Musikhjälpen

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 15. Today’s word is ‘Musikhjälpen‘ which translates as Music Aid.

Since 2008, the radio/tv program ‘Musikhjälpen’ has become a traditional part of the lead up to Christmas.

In this program, 3 presenters are locked into a glass ‘cage’ on a town square somewhere in small town Sweden – this year from the northern town of Sundsvall. They are sleep deprived and only allowed to eat liquids.

From the cage, they broadcast radio and tv round the clock until they are released a week later.

The program is a fund-raising event for Sweden’s international aid organization Radiohjälpen. People up and down the country request songs and make donations, or carry out fund-raising activities. Live music performed in the ‘cage’ has also become an important part of the event. At most, the event has raised a staggering 74,410,363 SEK in 2017 when the theme was fighting against child prostitution.

Every year the theme is different; this year the theme is ‘every woman has the right to survive her pregnancy’.

Throughout the years, many of Sweden’s music and media celebrities have taken on the challenge of incarceration, such as singers Sara Dawn Finer, Daniel Adams-Ray, Molly Sandén, Miriam Bryant and Linnea Henriksson, and rappers Petter and Timbuktu. This year, radio profiles Linnea Wikblad and Assia Dahir are locked in with YouTube influencer Emil Hansius.

The program is based on an original format called Serious Request from Holland and is an amazing display of charity just a couple of weeks before Christmas.

Advent Calendar – Dec 14: Lussekatt

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 14. Today’s word is ‘Lussekatt‘ which is a traditional saffron bun.

The sight and smell of the lussekatt screams Advent and Christmas in Sweden. The lussekatt, is a rich, spiced yeast-leavened sweet bun that is flavoured with saffron and usually contains raisins. In fact, saffron is a very popular ingredient at Christmas time with a whole cornucopia of baked goods being spiced with the expensive substance.

The lussekatt buns are baked into many shapes, of which the most common is a reversed S-shape. They are traditionally eaten during Advent, and especially on Saint Lucy’s Day, December 13. This could be the reason why it is called ‘lusse’ – a derivative of Lucy. However, there is a more sinister explanation.

In one theory, the lussekatt has its origins in Germany in the 1600’s. According to legend at that time, the devil used to appear as a cat, to torment children. To counteract this, people baked buns and colored them bright yellow to mimic the sun and scare away the devil. In West Sweden, the saffron buns were referred to as Devil’s buns (‘döbelskatt’) and the theory is that the name Lussekatt, comes from the word Lucifer. And the shape? Could it reflect a cat’s tail, or even the devil’s tongue?

Whatever the origin, the lussekatt remains a clear favourite in Sweden to eat at Christmas with pepparkaka and washed down with glögg.

If you’d like to bake your own lussekatt, you can find a recipe here

Advent Calendar – Dec 13: Lucia

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 13: Today’s word is ‘Lucia‘ – a light-bringing saint who is commemorated today.

At the darkest time of the year, Santa Lucia (St Lucy) pays us a visit early in the morning. Lucia has candles in her hair and is surrounded by her handmaidens and boys, and shines light into the dark depths of our spirits. And slowly, slowly, the day awakens.

Santa Lucia is believed to have been a Sicilian saint who suffered a martyr’s death in Syracuse, Sicily around AD 310. She was seeking help for her mother’s long-term illness at the shrine of Saint Agnes, in her native Sicily, when an angel appeared to her in a dream beside the shrine. As a result of this, Lucia became a devout Christian and refused to compromise her virginity in marriage.

Officials threatened to drag her off to a brothel if she did not renounce her Christian beliefs, but were unable to move her, even with a thousand men and fifty oxen pulling. So they stacked materials for a fire around her instead and set light to it, but she would not stop speaking.

One of the soldiers stuck a spear through her throat to stop her, but to no effect. Soon afterwards, the Roman consulate in charge was hauled off to Rome on charges of theft from the state and beheaded. Lucia was able to die only when she was given the Christian sacrement.

The tradition of Santa Lucia is said to have been brought to Sweden via Italian merchants and the idea of lighting up the dark appealed so much that the tradition remained. The current tradition of having a white-dressed woman with candles in her hair appearing on the morning of the Lucia day started in the area around Lake Vänern in the late 18th century and spread slowly to other parts of the country during the 19th century.

The modern tradition of having public processions in the Swedish cities started in 1927 when a newspaper in Stockholm elected an official Lucia for Stockholm that year. The initiative was then followed around the country through the local press. Today most cities in Sweden appoint a Lucia every year. Schools elect a Lucia and her maids among the students. The regional Lucias will visit shopping malls, old people’s homes and churches, singing and handing out gingerbread.

So, it might be cold and dark outside, but remember – after darkness comes the light.

Advent Calendar – Dec 12: Julstjärna

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Window 12. Today’s word is ‘Julstjärna‘ which translates literally as Christmas star and is a plant. It is pronounced ‘yule hwaerna’ (ish).

The Christmas star – ”Julstjärna” – is a plant originating in Mexico, that is popular as a decoration at Christmas time in Sweden. In the wild, it can grow to be several meters tall.

Its English name is poinsettia, named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, who was the first US minister to Mexico and who was credited with introducing the plant to the USA in the 1820’s. Actually, today December 12 is international poinsettia day, the anniversary of the death of Mr Poinsett.

The ‘julstjärna’ is not a plant that one sees very often during the rest of the year in Sweden, but suddenly at Christmas it explodes onto the scene and is a feature in most offices, homes and public buildings.

The flower has dark green and red leaves which is why it is popular at Christmas I guess. It also comes with white leaves, pink leaves and speckled leaves. The leaves are shaped a bit like a star, and I am assuming that where the Swedish name ‘Christmas star’ comes from. In Sweden, approximately 9 million ‘julstjärnor’ are bought every year.

Other popular flowers and plants that Swedes decorate their homes with at Christmas time are, amongst others, the towering amaryllis, the fragrant hyacinth, the romantic mistletoe, the tempestuous red tulip, and ilex – which are stiff branches with bright red berries on them.