The Monstrefact: The Tomtar

In this holiday episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the diminutive tomtars of Swedish holiday tradition…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,
a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. I
love to cover at least one holiday creature or monster
this time of year. The season is rife with them,

(00:31):
after all, from Crampus and the Yule Lads to the
child eating ogris Grilla. The last two I have benefited
from some more recent pop culture love on the excellent
animated family series Hilda, based on the Luke Pearson graphic
novel series. It makes great use of Nordic folkloric creatures,
including the house spirit known as a nissa in Danish

(00:53):
tradition and the Tomdar in Swedish tradition. The nissa, according
to folkloress Carol Rose and spirits varies, leprechauns and goblins,
tends to household chores and accepts only a bowl of
porridge as a reward if slighted it all. However, they
can prove quite mischievous and even cruel. The Tomtar Rose explains,

(01:15):
seems to reveal darker shades of the tradition. She shares
that they were believed to be the remnants of a
previous race of people displaced by invading Vikings, who were
then forced to occupy ancient forts, ruins, and other lonely
places of the country, and maliciously harassed the victorious humans
who now ruled over their former kingdom. But eventually humans

(01:37):
learned to appease these spirits and make use of their talents,
getting them to do farm and domestic work during the night.
The trick once more was a gift of porridge on
Christmas morning, accompanied by bread and maybe a little tobacco.
Rose writes quote. To give the tomtar any better gift
during the year would be sure to offend him, and

(01:59):
he would do no more work in trolls in the mill.
The supernatural stakes of water power, Academic Merril Caplin makes
an interesting argument about the possible connection between this and
other Scandinavian traditions and the use of water mills. This,
of course, is vital technology that harnesses the power of
running water. Such hauntings, if you will, are sometimes described

(02:21):
concerning specific water mills, which may tell us much about
how the people who use them thought about the powerful
and sometimes fickle natural resource they harnessed and depended upon them.
The argument I think aids us in considering various accounts
of helpful and sometimes harmful household spirits, supernatural entities for sure,
and important folklore motifs, but stand ins for forces of

(02:45):
chance and chaos, partially or even largely outside of our control.
While they serve other purposes, they also stand as cultural
tools used by pre modern societies to manage social anxiety
and economic risk. So as you're leaving cookies and milk
out for Santa this year, and maybe a carrot for Rudolph,
do consider an additional helping of porridge, bread and tobacco

(03:08):
for the top Tar. Tune in for additional episodes of
The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Animalius to Pindium each week.
As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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