The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year by Linda Raedisch Page A
Authors: Linda Raedisch
Tags: Non-Fiction
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needed.
12. “Hild, Queen of the Elves,” along with accompanying notes, can be found on pages 43–52 of Jacqueline Simpson’s Icelandic Folktales and Legends . See same, page 180, for detailed instructions for making a witch’s bridle, if you must.
Dead by Christmas Morning 57
Icelandic Snowflake Breads Sketch
Knead dough on lightly floured surface until you can
form it into a smooth ball. Divide the ball into thirty-two equal parts and form each part into a smooth, round ball.
Cover balls with a damp cloth.
On a floured surface, roll each ball out with a rolling pin to about 1⁄8 inch thickness or about 5 inches in diameter.
Try to keep them nice and round. Stack rolled-out rounds
between sheets of waxed paper.
Heat about 1½ inches of lard in a frying pan. While
it’s heating, you can make your snowflakes. You can prick
patterns directly into the round with the point of a sharp 58 Dead by Christmas Morning
knife, or, making sure it is well-floured, fold the round into quarters and snip pattern in with scissors just as you would make a paper snowflake. You can cut little triangles out of the dough or cut triangular flaps and press them back.
When the lard is hot enough to make a droplet of water
hiss and spit, lay the first snowflake gently in it. Fry each side for about 30 seconds or until golden brown.
Drain snowflakes on paper towels and sprinkle with
powdered sugar when cool.
Home But Not Alone
In “Hild, Queen of the Elves,” the hero must travel to Elfland, but it is actually more common for the elves to invite themselves onto the farm. This folktale motif is known
as “The Christmas Visitors.” Most often it is a young girl who is left home but not quite alone. One Icelandic version comes to us from the pen of the rather schoolmarmish
Hólmfrídur Árnadóttir, whose childhood memoir, When I
Was a Girl in Iceland , was one of a series published by the Norwood Press in the early 1900’s. Hólmfrídur writes of a
“young maiden,” the new girl, left behind for unspecified
reasons on Christmas Eve. Not as industrious as Hild, she
lights the candles in the baðstofa and settles down to read the Bible. The fact that she has a Bible and knows how to
read it tells us that we have now entered the Protestant era in Iceland. The story could even be taking place in Hólm-frídur’s own day, by which time not much else had changed
since the Viking Age except for the introductions of the coffee mill and the spinning wheel.
Dead by Christmas Morning 59
The heroine is concentrating on the printed words
before her when who should come trooping into the room
but a “crowd” of people of all ages. There is nothing sinister about them; in fact, they’re in a festive mood and eager for the pious maid to join in their dancing, but she ignores them and continues reading. The dancers offer her “beautiful presents,” but the imperturbable girl does not even
look up from her book. The party goes on all night with-
out her giving in to temptation, though she must have had
to pull her feet up on the bed to let the swirling couples by.
No ballroom to begin with, the baðstofa would have been
crowded with chairs, spinning wheels and beds—the one at
Glambaer contained eleven—so there would not have been
room to swing a Yule Cat (see Chapter Eight) let alone to
host a dance.
Hólmfrídur gives no indication that the uninvited
guests are diminutive or even that they are elves, but they are certainly no ordinary neighbors, for at dawn they vanish, leaving the baðstofa just as it was. It would be nice to hear that they left a few gifts behind to pay for the use of the space, but apparently it is enough that our young
maiden has survived the night. She must have gotten some-
thing out of the bargain, for it was she who tacitly received the unearthly visitors every Christmas Eve thereafter.
In “The Sisters and the Elves,” the daughter of a devoutly syncretist household actually
12. “Hild, Queen of the Elves,” along with accompanying notes, can be found on pages 43–52 of Jacqueline Simpson’s Icelandic Folktales and Legends . See same, page 180, for detailed instructions for making a witch’s bridle, if you must.
Dead by Christmas Morning 57
Icelandic Snowflake Breads Sketch
Knead dough on lightly floured surface until you can
form it into a smooth ball. Divide the ball into thirty-two equal parts and form each part into a smooth, round ball.
Cover balls with a damp cloth.
On a floured surface, roll each ball out with a rolling pin to about 1⁄8 inch thickness or about 5 inches in diameter.
Try to keep them nice and round. Stack rolled-out rounds
between sheets of waxed paper.
Heat about 1½ inches of lard in a frying pan. While
it’s heating, you can make your snowflakes. You can prick
patterns directly into the round with the point of a sharp 58 Dead by Christmas Morning
knife, or, making sure it is well-floured, fold the round into quarters and snip pattern in with scissors just as you would make a paper snowflake. You can cut little triangles out of the dough or cut triangular flaps and press them back.
When the lard is hot enough to make a droplet of water
hiss and spit, lay the first snowflake gently in it. Fry each side for about 30 seconds or until golden brown.
Drain snowflakes on paper towels and sprinkle with
powdered sugar when cool.
Home But Not Alone
In “Hild, Queen of the Elves,” the hero must travel to Elfland, but it is actually more common for the elves to invite themselves onto the farm. This folktale motif is known
as “The Christmas Visitors.” Most often it is a young girl who is left home but not quite alone. One Icelandic version comes to us from the pen of the rather schoolmarmish
Hólmfrídur Árnadóttir, whose childhood memoir, When I
Was a Girl in Iceland , was one of a series published by the Norwood Press in the early 1900’s. Hólmfrídur writes of a
“young maiden,” the new girl, left behind for unspecified
reasons on Christmas Eve. Not as industrious as Hild, she
lights the candles in the baðstofa and settles down to read the Bible. The fact that she has a Bible and knows how to
read it tells us that we have now entered the Protestant era in Iceland. The story could even be taking place in Hólm-frídur’s own day, by which time not much else had changed
since the Viking Age except for the introductions of the coffee mill and the spinning wheel.
Dead by Christmas Morning 59
The heroine is concentrating on the printed words
before her when who should come trooping into the room
but a “crowd” of people of all ages. There is nothing sinister about them; in fact, they’re in a festive mood and eager for the pious maid to join in their dancing, but she ignores them and continues reading. The dancers offer her “beautiful presents,” but the imperturbable girl does not even
look up from her book. The party goes on all night with-
out her giving in to temptation, though she must have had
to pull her feet up on the bed to let the swirling couples by.
No ballroom to begin with, the baðstofa would have been
crowded with chairs, spinning wheels and beds—the one at
Glambaer contained eleven—so there would not have been
room to swing a Yule Cat (see Chapter Eight) let alone to
host a dance.
Hólmfrídur gives no indication that the uninvited
guests are diminutive or even that they are elves, but they are certainly no ordinary neighbors, for at dawn they vanish, leaving the baðstofa just as it was. It would be nice to hear that they left a few gifts behind to pay for the use of the space, but apparently it is enough that our young
maiden has survived the night. She must have gotten some-
thing out of the bargain, for it was she who tacitly received the unearthly visitors every Christmas Eve thereafter.
In “The Sisters and the Elves,” the daughter of a devoutly syncretist household actually
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