Tag Archives: Swedish folklore

Legend: Gnomes

My informant K is a good friend of mine and their entire family loves gnomes, their mom most of all. They have a variety of different gnomes in all shapes and sizes in their front and back yards and they believe them to be a good luck charm. They also have special gnomes for every holiday, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and they even have pink gnomes for Valentine’s Day. K was born in Sweden and they have a lot of family that live there still, so Swedish culture is a big part of their family. K told me that in Sweden, gnomes are called “tomtes” or “nisses” and they are house gnomes who live under your house and protect buried treasure.

I always found K’s story about gnomes so interesting because I didn’t even know what a gnome was before I moved to Canada and I never would have guessed how important they were in some cultures. K told me that when they were younger, their parents told them and their younger sister stories about how gnomes bury treasure in the bushes every winter, and their parents would hide gold coins for them to find. They would even put out little dishes of food for the gnomes. I think it’s really amazing how their culture is able to bond their entire family together. K said that they would decorate and set up gnomes together, or gift them to each other for birthdays or as Christmas gifts.

Swedens National Dance

Text: 

The Hambo

Context: 

Collector: “Give us a brief history on practice and use of the Hambo.” 

Informant: “The Hambo is Swedens national dance, and is a couple’s dance that originated in the late 19th century and became popular across Sweden and other Nordic countries. It is characterized by its graceful, flowing movements and the use of a gliding step that gives the dance a smooth and fluid quality. The music for the Hambo is typically played on a fiddle or accordion and has a lively, upbeat tempo. The dance is usually performed at traditional Swedish celebrations, such as Midsommar, festivals, and weddings. It is more often taught in schools as part of physical education and is sometimes performed by professional dance troupes.“

Collector: “How did Hambo play a role in your life?“

Informant: “Dancing is a very integral part of Scandinavian celebrations and ceremonies, symbolizing joy, unity, and tradition. My father made me start Scandinavian dancing from a young age, so it has just become a part of who I am. From this I have developed a tremendous appreciation for dance, which brings a joy I cannot obtain from anything else.“

Analysis:

The Hambo seems to play a crucial role as a performance in the carrying out of many Swedish traditions, which makes sense since it comes from a nordic country. Sweden is a small nordic country, regions known for having rich, nationally recognized folklore. These countries typically weaponized folklore against the presence of outside, unwelcomed invaders during the 19th and 20th centuries. With this weaponization comes a greater sense of nationalism, and as a result, spurs the interconnectedness of its peoples and cultures. This way, countries like Sweden are able to act more like a single body, and strengthen themselves under their unity. Larger, more powerhouse countries like France, the UK, or the USA, did not require such weaponization for their strength was more industrial as opposed to cultural. This is why you see a weak, distilled presence of folklore within all of them.

St. Lucia’s Day Sweden

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (SC).

HS: So you have some particular traditions that you celebrate here in the United States that you got from your Swedish heritage, is that right?

SC: Oh yeah. Lots of stuff that we do and when I tell people they’re like, really? I’ve never heard of this before! So we celebrate Santa Lucia or St. Lucia Day- it’s kind of like a pre-Christmas holiday. It’s a really big thing back in Sweden where my family is from and we’ve kind of carried it on out here. It basically commemorates this girl who died while bringing food to Christians that were trying to escape the Romans. My daughter dresses up in all white to represent the purity of Saint Lucia and there’s a big feast after. Lots of amazing food. You’ve gotta try saffron bread.

Background:

My informant is a co-worker from my job. He is a Relationship Banker, and so we work a lot less closely than my other co-workers on the teller line. Regardless, he is a great guy and we enjoy a little office rivalry- he went to UCLA. Yuck. His parents immigrated to the United States from Sweden, but because he still has a lot of family living there, he visits a lot and in the process has brought back a lot of Swedish traditions to his family here in the United States.

Context:

We had gotten all of the pre-opening work done that we needed to get done, and it just so happened that our Branch Manager brought in some Dunkin Donuts to rally the morale of the troops. And so my co-worker and I sit there, grubbing some glazed donuts, going about the usual surface-level conversation. The typical weekend updates, customer complaints, all the good stuff. I decided to shift the conversation to talk about a tradition that my family and I had done the past weekend and asked if he had any that he did with his family. He was delighted to hear the question and started elaborating immediately.

Thoughts:

It was interesting to learn about this tradition and how important it is in Swedish culture. According to some brief research that I did about the holiday, it is supposed to mark a time of light and happiness in a time of a lot of darkness. A lot of schools end classes early so that families can prepare for the festivities. The aspect of the holiday that I found most intriguing was how it incorporates both pagan and Christian traditions. This has to do with an inherent struggle between light and darkness that Pagan culture elaborates a lot upon, as the geographic location of Sweden leads to long periods of light and darkness instead of the typical day. Scholars have gone as far as to say that St. Lucia is simply the Norse goddess Freya “dressed up” as a Christian saint.

Source of Pagan “dress up” theory:
https://www.norwegianamerican.com/victory-light-winters-dark-gloom/#:~:text=Some%20scholars%20believe%20that%20the,up%E2%80%9D%20as%20a%20Christian%20saint.

Våffeldagen

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (SC).

SC: *Brings in waffles for everyone at work*

HS: No way! Thank you! These look absolutely amazing.

SC: No problem man. It was waffle day yesterday, but I wasn’t here. We have to celebrate today.

HS: There’s a waffle day?

SC: Yeah. It’s something that my family does that we got from Sweden. It’s called Våffeldagen. It’s actually a funny backstory. So we used to celebrate Vårfrudagen, which is another Swedish holiday, but because the names for the holiday and waffles are so similar, we just eat waffles instead.

Background:

My informant is a co-worker from my job. He is a Relationship Banker, and so we work a lot less closely than my other co-workers on the teller line. Regardless, he is a great guy and we enjoy a little office rivalry- he went to UCLA. Yuck. His parents immigrated to the United States from Sweden, but because he still has a lot of family living there, he visits a lot and in the process has brought back a lot of Swedish traditions to his family here in the United States.

Context:

It was about 10:00 am at work, and all of us were getting our pre-opening work done when my informant came in with some waffles that his family had made.

Thoughts:

I never thought that some waffles would be the catalyst for a piqued interest in linguistics, but here we are. The fact that Swedes celebrate Vårfrudagen, or “Our Lady’s Day,” by eating waffles because waffles in Swedish sounds like Vårfrudagen, is, for some reason, just so interesting to me. It made me realize the real effect that language has on our everyday lives. Prior to hearing about this cultural development, I would have argued that the spelling of a word is rather arbitrary and probably has very little impact on culture. Våffeldagen, or Waffle Day, is proof that language has a profound impact on cultural and societal development.

1. Julmust: A Crucial Part of a Swedish Christmas

Background information:

Julmust is very easy to find in grocery stores all around Sweden from November to January, as it is in high demand and often replaces the original Coca-Cola. At any other point of time during the year, however, it is very difficult to find as it is not Christmas season during the months outside the range of November to January. Therefore, as this drink is not always available, it makes the drink much more appealing to people because many enjoy the taste, feel that they can better celebrate Christmas with it, and feel that they will miss out if they do not drink it when it is available during the Christmas season, as they will need to wait until the next year to drink it if they choose not to drink it that Christmas.

 

Main Piece:

In Swedish Christmas traditions, food is an extremely important part of the celebration. Usually the array of Christmas foods or “julbord”, literally translated to “Christmas table”, does not vary much from family to family. The “julbord” usually always contains the Christmas ham among many other Christmas foods typically found around the world. A specific Christmas food that is significantly different from others around the world, however, is the Swedish “Julmust”. Anyone who has celebrated Christmas in Sweden knows about the importance of Julmust at the Christmas table, as a Christmas meal is not complete without Julmust. Julmust is a staple for many Swedish families, including mine, around Christmas time as it is basically a more festive version of Coca-Cola. It is seen as festive because it tastes very similar to regular Coca-Cola but also has a blend of spices mixed into the drink that give the flavor more of a holiday feeling. For this reason, many, including my family, feel that Julmust is essential to celebrating Christmas because they have the perfect Christmas drink to complement the Christmas foods at the julbord. Because I was raised with Julmust being an integral part of my Christmas celebrations, I cannot imagine Christmas without it. Julmust not only tastes good, but also is a drink that everyone in my family enjoys and therefore brings us together around the holiday season.

When we moved from Sweden to California when I was almost six years old, however, it was very difficult to find Julmust in grocery stores because American grocery stores do not know what Julmust is and therefore do not carry the drink. As a result, through searching online forums, visiting special Scandinavian grocery stores that were hours away, and going to IKEA, we were able to locate Julmust at IKEA and the Scandinavian markets and were thus able to celebrate Christmas in the United States with this drink every year thereafter.

 

Personal thoughts:

I am a huge fan of Julmust and cannot imagine my Christmas experience without it. Even though I have lived in the United States since I was almost six years old, I will never forget my Swedish roots and will continue to practice even the most trivial Swedish traditions such as drinking Julmust when celebrating Christmas.