Sorry, Krampus, there’s a new yuletide terror in town—several of them, in fact.
My condolences to the children of Iceland. While many Christmas celebrations around the world are full of tidings of comfort, joy, and rampant consumerism, for young Icelanders it’s a time of terror, where you’re lucky to escape with your life… or a potato. At least, that seems to be the case according to this fascinatingly frightening folklore.
Let’s begin with Grýla, a giant part-troll, part-animal creature who lives in the Dimmuburgir mountains and comes down at Christmas to look for naughty children to abduct. When she gets them home, she boils them alive in her cauldron for a piping hot stew for herself and her third husband, Leppalúði, which lasts until the following winter. Apparently, Icelandic children are genuinely terrified of Grýla; depictions of the ogress can be spotted throughout the country, although sometimes she looks more like a huge, gnarled old woman than a beast. However, according to the Icelandic Legends collected by Jón Arnasen, published in English in 1864, here’s a description that indicates why she inspire genuine fear:
“Grýla had three hundred heads, six eyes in each head, besides two livid and ghostly blue eyes at the back of each neck. She had goat’s horns, and her ears were so long as to hang down to her shoulders at one end, and at the other to join the ends of her three hundred noses. On each forehead was a tuft of hair, and on each chin a tangled and filthy beard. Her teeth were like burnt lava. To each thing she had bound a sack in which she used to carry naughty children and she had, moreover, hoofs like a horse. Besides all this, she had fifteen tails, and on each tail a hundred bags of skin, every one of which bags would hold twenty children.”
That means Grýla is grabbing up to 2,000 naughty children at a go, which either indicates she’s a marvelously efficient kidnapper or Iceland has an unfathomably awful naughtiness problem. For the record, the official tourism site for Iceland softens Grýla’s image by saying she “can only capture children who misbehave but those who repent must be released,” but I can’t find another source to back that up.
Happily, Grýla managed to find love—well, matrimony, at least—on three separate occasions. The first two were named Gustur and Boli; legends vary as to whether they were eaten, murdered, or died of old age (and who died in which manner).
