Quote Originally Posted by lph View Post
Still not directly to do with the why of seasons either, but anyway: the Vikings had a "blót", i.e. sacrifice, several times a year to the gods, one in midsummer, one after the harvest season to thank for a good harvest, and most importantly one around the winter solstice, "jól", for the harvest season to come. Blót is related to blood, which they drank. Christmas is still called "jul" here, from pre-Christian times. You can find details on Wikipedia more than I know

But a funny spinoff is the tradition that still exists of putting out a bowl of porridge (thick, creamy rice porridge, good stuff!) to the "nisse" at Christmas. Today Santa Claus is also called a nisse (julenissen), but the original nisse was a small grey-bearded elf living in the barn, the guardian of the household, and the porridge was his traditional sacrifice. If you didn't put out porridge for him he could think up all kinds of mischief on a traditional farm, sour the milk, lame the cows, stuff like that. Nothing large and magical like affecting the seasons though.

LPH, did each house have an individual guardian or was the nisse part of something larger, like my Catholic neighbor two doors down who had an icon of Mary in the flower bed by her front door, but Mary is Mary regardless of which house's garden her statue is standing in...the same being watching over different households.

What if the house didn't have a barn? Are there different guardians for townspeople? How was this nisse related to the family? Like, in Thailand some families have spirit houses outside the main house for the spirits of their ancestors, and in China, some families keep shrines to their ancestors inside their homes. Are the nisse attached to the family or the place? If the family moves, does the nisse move with them?

I can go read all of this on Wikipedia, I'm sure, but it's more interesting coming from someone who actually lives in the culture.

Roxy