WILL THE REAL SANTA STAND UP?
Tony Samstag on the scramble to exploit a Nordic myth Oslo A MEASURE of the importance of the Father Christmas industry in these lati- tudes is that the Nordic Council has held a series of formal debates during the past few years as to which member nation can claim to be the homeland of `Julenissen', as Santa is known in the Scandinavian lan- guages. Discussion of the long-standing rivalry is by no means restricted to this soporific forum, however.
At last year's World Congress of Father Christmases or `Julenisser' (the Norwegian plural takes an 'r') in Copenhagen, for example, no fewer than 70 delegates from ten countries convened to address the issue. It was the 27th such meeting, and with reindeer logic it was held in July. The three score and ten Father Christmases, in full fig, tucked into traditional Danish Christmas dinners, which tend to be hearty even by northern European standards. Tempers rose quickly in the summer heat, boosted by copious draughts of aquavit and beer. The proceedings were hastily adjourned after a Father Christmas from Greenland challenged a Finnish colleague to a duel with dog-whips.
A subsequent session of the Nordic Council decreed that the official abode of Father Christmas was after all to be Rovaniemi, in Finnish Lapland. This set- tled nothing. The Greenlanders, in the meantime, had discovered the global warming trend, which clinched the argu- ment, as far as they were concerned, because it appeared to guarantee snowless winters in the competing winter wonder- lands to the south. Unimpressed, the Nor- wegian town of Drobak, about an hour from the capital down the Oslofjord, defi- antly erected the world's first Santa-cross- ing road warning sign (see picture).
The stakes are higher than the apparent inconsequentiality of the issue might sug- gest. Rovaniemi, probably the biggest sin- gle Father Christmas development, plays host to about 25 charter flights, Concorde among them, annually; the Christmas industry in Finland is reckoned to be worth over £10 million a year, a large sum for a sparsely populated part of the world not known for its hospitality to foreign tourists. Among Rovaniemi's most loyal customers are Japanese honeymooners, who find the combination of exotic snowscape, sauna and long hours of winter darkness wildly romantic.
Believe it or not, the £1,500 Concorde Christmas Day return, London-Rovanie- mi, is usually a sell-out. There are also more down-market away-days from Britain on conventional aircraft for about £300, and of course longer-stay package tours, often including accommodation in log-cabins, for somewhat less than the Concorde price all-in. Activities are about what you might expect: sleigh-rides, of both the dog and reindeer variety; lots of jolly fat men in red suits and white beards dispensing gifts to the kiddies, unspoilt Lapps in native costume beamingly serving hot gobbets of reindeer meat, and plenty of Santa Claus gift shoppes, all major cur- rencies and credit cards accepted.
The Norwegian town of Drobak, a charming old nautical village saved from devastation by day-trippers only by the brevity of the Nordic summer, is far more typical of what is still a cottage industry, here comprising a shoppe in a pretty 19th- century wooden building that used to be a chapel and is still known locally as 'Reve- lations', and a post office in which cards and letters will be graced with the appro- priate postmark. (I wonder what your
'Do you think it's someone from the mort- gage company come to repossess the house?' average foreign brat writing to Santa Claus and receiving a reply from Julenissen 1440 Drobak' will make of it, however.)
In 'Revelations', rechristened 'Christmas House' for her purposes, Mrs Eva Irene Johansen sells authentic Norwegian Julenisser, which, to an outsider, look unnervingly like Beatrix Potter-style mice and miniature garden gnomes, to coachloads of mainly Nordic visitors. Mrs Johansen used to make all the dolls herself; but as the business expanded, contracts were negotiated with a collective of Siamese elves, hence the 'Made in Thai- land' stamp on the occasional bottom. But the Julenisser are still, she insists, all based on genuine Norwegian designs. 1, for one, believe her, although Julenissen is clearly a minor variation on the all-purpose pixie common in European folklore. In fact a nisse is nothing more than an imp or a sprite, with the Norse root of the English `Yule' as prefix to make Father Christmas.
Small colonies of Father Christmases and their helpers abound throughout the Nordic lands. In the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, the sisters Helga and Thorunn Egilsson have developed a nice little earner in the form of the 13 'Christmas Lads', yet another national variation on the theme, fashioned from jumble-sale remnants and offcuts of wool, with walnuts for heads. The Icelandic Christmas Lads, significantly, have nothing to do with the mainstream European Saint Nicholas branch of the Father Christmas myth, but derive from folk tales first recorded in the 17th century, when they were described as 'gigantic . . . evil folk' who devoured naughty children. Norway's Julenissen, prettified and sani- tised for the Coca-Cola culture, must simi- larly stem from the rebarbative troll side of the family.
The Norwegian Frid Ingulstad, who has just published a history of Father Christ- mas, seemed to have it about right when she described what she claims is the earli- est evidence of his existence: a rock-carving of a Viking ship found, as a matter of fact, in Drobak. 'There are two Julenisser on board,' she says. 'One of them is standing look-out at the bow. The other is vomiting over the side.'
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