Santa Claus’s Homeland

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22593, 24 December 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

Santa Claus’s Homeland

Where does Santa Clsus live? Some say he was a Polish king many centuries ago, and others that he was a Hungarian saint, but all those who really know will tell you where he lives—in cold Lapland, the country of the dwarf pines, and the cloudberry marshes, and the sleepy brown bears. As you travel into the northern parts of Sweden you begin more and more to realise that here is Santa Claus’s country. Here are low hills rolling away from green to blue, dark and stocky pines standing as stiff as toy soldiers, little silver birches on the shores of long blue lakes, where the floating logs jostle each other like matchsticks. And here and there is a bright vermilion house, a tall, two-storeyed wooden building on stilts, and of the brightest red imaginable. They look like houses out of Hans Andersen’s tales. The nearer the very cold regions the Swedish farmers live, the more brilliantly they paint their houses. They look very gay in that green and blue landscape. In the little villages you see all kinds of dwellings, all huddled together in the hollow of a valley—all built of wood, some with carved gables, others thatched with straw, and some with earthen roofs growing all over with grass and moss. The little churches all seem to have their steeples built apart, and these are made of elaborately carved and painted slats, like a bird-cote. In the houses you may find lovely wooden platters and other kitchen ware, all shaped and coloured by hand during the long winter evenings when there is nothing else to do. The northern Swedish folk are very friendly, and they run out to greet strangers as they go by. In their bright clothes they, too, look like wooden toys. From place to place there wander violinists, playing at the inns and at farmhouses. Their instruments, called nykelharpes, are clumsily made of hollowed pine, with several strings which are stopped by a little wheelof pressure keys, something like the old Italian hurdy-gurdy. Their tunes are very jiggy, and often sound off-key, but they are very popular among the Swedish peasant folk. If you were invited to Christmas dinner in one of these isolated farmhouses, what would you have? Maybe anchovies served with raw; eggs, veal with whortleberry jaifi, and then a queer prune jell/ with lots of cream. Quite different from the Christmas dinner one finds in other parts of the world, but still very interesting when one is hungry from a long and snowy journey. Lapland is shaped like a huge triangle, perched north of Sweden. Each side of the triangle is about 200 miles long. At first it seems a very dull country, and you cannot imagine even jolly St. Nicholas re-

(By Jean Ingram)

maining cheerful in its dreary atmosphere. Away in the distance is a long- line of low mountains, barely interrupting the grey-green of the land and the grey of the sky. All the trees are stunted by the cold, and the ground is carpeted for miles and miles with moss, silvery grey and dull green. After a while you become used to the dull colours of this country, and understand why the Lapps wear the brightest clothing they can make. Santa Claus’s people are one of the world’s wandering races. They are almost all nomads, wandering from one place to another over the desolate, tundra-like country, following the vast herds of reindeer which are their only wealth. They are a superstitious, ignorant folk, who have gradually become converted to Christianity over a period of about 300 years. Their language, the Swedish say, is like no other tongue in the world. What are they like to look at? Rather stocky, with narrow black eyes, slanting cheekbones, and black hair, they were at some time in their history related to the Mongol races. Some of them are very ugly, but some of the girls look like pretty Japanese. Their clothes are so brilliant they stand out in the grey landscape like painted dresses on dolls. Blue jerkin with red and yellow stripes down the seams, tight trousers, and soft reindeer leather boots wound round with braided ribbons are the ordinary suit of a Lapp man. He wears a tall peaked cap with a scarlet tassel on top, and round his waist is a broad leather belt Irom which, swing his knife, in a scabbard of carved horn, his axe, and his tinder box. They never bother to build houses. As they have continually to move the reindeer’s feeding grounds, why trouble building, they say. They live in huts that can be built in n very short time. They are pyramids, built of turf on a framework of birch poles, about 10 feet square. The top is open, and the smoke drifts out as in'an Indian lodge. The door is for all the world like the sail of a Chinese boat, a triangle of hide stiffened with rods. Into this little dwelling the Lapp family crowds, fat dark children and quiet shepherd dogs clustering about the hot smoky fire, on which hangs an enormous kettle. Food is not very plentiful—reindeer cheese and butter, cpffee, soup, and very few vegetables. There are only two fruits in that desolate country, the delicious bilberry, and cloudberries. Cloudberries grow thickly in the morasses, and sometimes you see Lapp women and children returning home with great quantities of. them. They have been down in the valleys, where the treacherous bogs are thick with bushes, growing between the stagnant, moss-covered pools and the dreary crooked trees. There are many miles of marsh in

Lapland, desolate boggy stretches of grass which squelches and oozes under your feet. Sometimes you see a whole valley, with the pools half covered with a livid moss and coarse grass with little white fluffy flowers which look like thousands of minute mops. The cloudberry is at first a burning red, slowly paling as it ripens. The wellfruited morasses are jealously kept in families, and are -very rarely plundered, except by the bears, who like berries, too. The people are friendly, but shy about their beliefs and ways. They have woven a mass of legend about their land, which has been settled for a very long time. The hills have been ground down by glaciers, and scattered moraines bear witness to the passing of the ice age. At the time of their paganism the Lapps were nature-worshippers, and belief in the old gods often lingers. What strange names they had! The Reindeer Master, the Old Woman of the Hearth, the Butter Cat, Thor the World Man, and the Wind Man who drove the winds before him with a club. All their songs are incantations to the nature spirits, and strange wild songs they are, too. Everything has its song, and, of course, its attendant spirit. Besides that, the Lapps believe in the Uldra, a friendly race of gnomes who live underground and look after the animals. They keep herds of snowwhite reindeer in the forests, and make silver bells for their collars. (It is from these reindeer, no doubt, that Santa Claus takes his steedsii The Lappish mind is filled with all kinds of fairytale beliefs—talking wolves and bears, ogres, healers, and sorcerers who can bring rain

or an early spring. Lapps were once for their sorcery . . . remember the tale of the old woman who sold leathern bags containing the four winds? She was a Lapp sorceress. Some of the Lapps have herds of 1000 reindeer, which they move from place to place as food becomes scarce. Lovely slender soft-eyed creatures, they eat moss, which gradually becomes covered in im-

penetrable snow. Then their owners take them down into the pine forests where they find enough dry grey lichens to feed them through the winter. Winter over Lapland is still and white, as in all the northern countries. Looking at the dark and dangerous moraines;

blanketed in snow, the bog pools frozen over and the trees rimmed in hoar frost, one can understand the odd, fairy tale ideas of the Lapps, living on the roof of the wrrld in a strange is e age land. But that does not matter. With its sweet-voiced birds, the wide stretches of misty bog, the dark dwarf forests, and the shy, gailyclad people. Lapland remains the best country in the world for the Christmas friend, Santa Claus.

Christmas Verses

The man in the moon Came tumbling down And asked the way to Norwich; He went by the south. And burnt his mouth ’ With eating cold plum-porridge. Wash your hands, or else the are Will not teend to your desire; Unwashed hands, ye maidens know Dead the fire, though ye blow. Kindle the Christmas brand, and then Till sunset ,let it burn; Which quenched, then lay it up again Till Christmas next return. Part must be kept, wherewith to teend The Christmas log next year; And where ’tis safely kept, th* fiend Can do no mischief there. Without the door let sorrow lie. And if for cold it hap to die; We’ll bury it in the Christmas ptS» And ever more be merry! Ule, Ule, Ule, Ule, Three puddings in a pule. Crack nuts, and cry Ule.