He roamed at large, hungry and evil
In the freezing Yule snow.
In every home
People shuddered at his name.
Jólin koma (featuring the poem, Jólakötturinn) written by Jóhannes úr Kötlum and translated into English by Hallberg Hallmundsson.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths lay heavily on my conscience. Children – all. I have played foully, most foully, and for that my soul shall burn, but before that time, I must confess my story: the true version. The tale that none, only you, shall know.
I hope I can trust your discretion.
Gryla, an Icelandic witch, conjured me from fire, ash, and northern spleen-wood. A concoction of evil stitched to evil, bubbled to fruition within her mountainside cauldron. She had prayed for a devil – a fiend worse than she – a creature of depravity as a plaything. A demonic toy. It took years of ill spent efforts, cursing the moon and ineffectual attempts at half-lives before I was finally born, burning bright. A hellish coal.
A seed of cruelty that wept in her womb, was I. A kernel of discontentment.
A furred curse.
I should never have been. An unlawful stowaway.
At first, she loved me. Oh, how she loved me. Petting my sable pelt to a silken sheen, whilst I purred contentedly upon her lap, feeding me bloodied morsels of mice and rats. Cocooning me in her cave of hellish glow, my eyes learnt to shine in her darkened light. Whenever she returned from hunting within her winter wonderland, I would tunnel amidst her robed skirts, showing my warmth and affection which is natural towards a mother – for that was what she was. All I knew.
As I grew from a kitten, her expectation of me morphed into something steelier – rigidity, its target. The petting upon her lap ceased as I grew too large, surpassing her in size like a lunar eclipse. I no longer could nestle within the confines of her bony lap. Oftentimes, she would dispel me to the chilled earthen floor, no longer obliging my purred companionship but seeking solace elsewhere, always outside the cave – to dim lights in snow-coated land, far away on the horizon. I never knew what called her there – not then. I wish I did not know now.
One Christmas when I had outgrown the shelter of the cave, she changed completely, forcing me to sleep at the mountainside, in full force of the North Pole’s unrelenting, cutthroat, and wintery winds. Desperately huddled, long days and nights would sluggishly turn over time. Abandoned, I had to hunt for myself, bar the odd offering she lay at my feet – normally a slaughtered deer, stabbed through the heart with a steely arrow, itseyes glassy, perpetually deadened.
On a November evening, tired of rejection, I crept up the mountainside of Kaldbakur, desperate for comfort and to lavish once more in the dulcet tones of her light-noted, lyrical voice, the one I cherished as a kitten. Begging for forgiveness, not truly knowing how I had wronged her, she spoke the following words:
“Jólakötturinn, if you wish for me to be your mother once more, you must obey my orders.”
Confused, I knew not how to answer, but only to agree as I had always done with her every decree.
“What will please you, mother? I will do anything,” I answered meekly.
“You must kill the children of every Icelandic village if they did not receive a new knitted item of clothing for Christmas. This, you must do, every Yuletide,” she instructed. “It is what you were always destined for and now that you know what it is to be alone in this world, I think you will be a most dutiful servant, Jólakötturinn, just as I intended,” she added, spite dripping from each uttered word.
A cruel, iced glare spread through her eyes, turning the corners of her wrinkled mouth. Ominous blackened lips stretched to a grin, turning my own heart to stone – for in this moment, I knew what she truly was. A hag. A necromancer of the most heinous kind. A killer of children.
“I have killed for centuries, Jólakötturinn, and as my offspring, it is now your turn to take charge. You are ready. Clawed, fang-toothed, twisted with longing. A perfect assassin,” she added, turning her gnarled hands in desperate glee.
“I will not,” I answered simply. “It is not in my nature.”
“It is your only calling, Jólakötturinn,” she spat. “You are a stealthy weapon, one which the infants of Iceland will fear to even glance upon. You are my monster, ready to perform at my whim,” she cackled, slicing the air with frozen cuts of barbarity.
Hanging my shaggy head, I slumped my way back to the frigid mountain floor. Numb to my core. A hollowed-out creature. A beast lost in a perpetual storm.
Christmas beckoned. Songs of Yuletide carried on the tempestuous winds, songs of Icelandic folklore and joy. Yearning, my heart craved to be within a loving home, curled before a blazing fire, lost to dreams of mice, catching and playing with balls of yarn. A kitten-like glee painted these visions, enamoured by Icelandic Yule songs about it being a time of giving and forgiveness. I craved deeply for the time before, when my matted fur did not hang in lifeless, loveless knots, untamed and unkempt; a time when I frolicked within the cave I called home. A time when I thought myself loved. Seen. A child.
With the passing of presents exchanged on Christmas Eve, Gryla demanded that I act – instructing that I could no longer dwell in misery beneath her cave. Refusing to do so, she used her powers, slashing her talon-like nails into my tresses, clawing for flesh to ravage and mar, desperate for my blood to flow. To punish. A mournful crimson ripple began to course amidst the virginal snow. I stared at its trickle, hiding my pain from view.
Slumping to the frozen earth, she buried her face into her skirts. My mother – once again. A woman with a semblance of a heart, even if buried deeply.
“I need their flesh to keep me alive,” she begged, sodden in my blood, cast in bars of moonlight. “I age and can no longer muster the strengthyou own,” she wept, gazing up at me as a child lost in the woods.
Fooled into believing that her life was at risk, I padded my silent way to the nearest Icelandic villages. I had learnt over the years, although never having left the mountain, that in Fjörðurnar and Látraströnd I should find many households bearing children.
As I reluctantly stalked onwards, battling blazing snow blizzards and frighteningly low temperatures, I had macabre visions of Gryla, my once mother, feasting upon the flesh of innocents. Bearing sharp incisors, I saw her as an ogress, one with an insatiable appetite for flesh. How could I bring myself to tear an unsuspecting infant to its death, dragging it from hearthside opulence and cheer to the destitute barren lands of the high mountain, Kaldbakur? No child would survive the deadly ice – ice that had weaved into the cords of mother’s hateful heart.
Woefully, I reached Fjörðurnar within a few hours. Rivulets of ice had driven their spikes into my down, striking sharp stabs as I scoured the bleached hinterlands. A small cottage beckoned my attention with honey light seeping from small, latticed windows. Towering above the humble abode, I stole a look into the front room where a small family gathered before a log fire. Rosy cheeks stained their faces, toasting pleasingly afore the flames. Two children played a simple peg game as their parents handed out tightly wrapped gifts in brown paper. I prayed silently for woollen jumpers or any woven garment sewed by the mother – prayed as hard as I could, but alas, it was not to be.
Depressingly, two wooden soldiers fell from wrapped bundles carved with exactness and dexterity, but no new clothing gifted. As per Gryla’s grim instruction, I knew I must steal these children, dragging them away from all they held dear to a monster’s lair – a place where solace and love would never exist for them. I had experienced firsthand that once the light had gone out, it was never to return, leaving a shrivelled, deadened soul.
The youngest of the two children, a brown-haired boy, gazed up as I lowered myself closer to the windowpane, drawn as a moth to the softly flickering candlelight and the happy familial scene spread before me. A high-pitched scream sounded as soon as his eyes locked on mine; pulsing rings of devilish, yellow bile slick with deceit and villainy. In Christ’s name I understood his fright and terror, for I knew myself to be a creature destined for hell. His mother panicked, clutched him to her chest as I smashed the pane, before sliding my oversized paw into the dwelling. Snatching him with a singular, colossal claw, sharp as a butcher’s blade, he swung in front of his family, before I raised him higher, yanking him outward into the snowy night. His sister screeched in panic, a high-pitched, unforgettable din, endeavouring to flee from the room, but my instincts were quick, feral-sharp, and before her parents could shelter her or she escape, I thieved her easily with my other paw, one claw outstretched as a silver hook. The two swung defenceless like caught fish on a line.
Leaving bereft parents behind, hollering obscenities at me, I pushed hard, sprinting home, with the two children imprisoned within a sack tied to my back. Writhing, they tried to break free, wriggling from side to side as I ran, desperate to find a way out. A way back to their cosy homestead where I had savagely uprooted them. Hating myself more as night tightened its hold around me, blending my obsidian locks into the darkling oubliette of a landscape, I neared to turning around, to return the innocent souls. Yet, alas, the need of adoration, petting and love, once again, overcame any selfless desire, so I bounded onwards, my paws frigid from the unforgiving snow beneath me.
Once I arrived, a sense of panic washed over my bristling tufts, readying to deliver the goods I had to fetch like a dutiful, unthinking hound. Did she expect me to kill them? Would I be a murderer as well asa kidnapper
Pacing back and forth at the foot of the mountain, my yellow eyes guidedGryla from her private sphere – a world from which she expelled me from. Hunch-backed and shrivelled, she appeared diminutive as her shaky steps brought her nearer to me. Did she sicken? I pondered. Is she creeping nearer to death? I questioned.
“You have done well, Jólakötturinn,” she managed, eyeing the tumbling formlessness of the two captives within the sack. “You shall have warmth for the night,” she added, inviting me to join her as she took to re-climb the rocky steps. “We have a bigger home now. A better cave,” she informed.
Joy trickled through my veins at the welcome tidings of love slowly returning. Petted as I once was. No longer would I linger on rocky outcrops and ledges batted by Siberian blasts, where even I, giant and formidable as I was, had oftentimes wished for death to find me, claiming me as its own.
“Thank you,” I offered in reply as I dutifully followed her steps. A path I had long waited to travel.
*
Time passed as time does and her demands grew. Pampered I was, but only when it suited her to do so – at intervals. When a feed beckoned, she would cease her fussing of me, instead, turning a cold shoulder and ignoring my pleas for attention. I took to stealing more children; her appetite growing and becoming unquenchable. My hunts would drive me farther, venturing to more obscure villages and hamlets, hidden within hinterlands under bleak, steel-locked skies.
Years became decades and Gryla changed. Her body weakened regardless of the number of children I brought to her, alive and kicking in cloth sacks, before she boiled them alive and devoured their flesh. I had no idea the reasons behind the sudden changes and ,in fear of angering her, I kept silent, not wanting her crooked fingers to cease coursing through my bewhiskered mane by the fireside each time I returned from a kidnap. It was the essence of my being and all I lived and breathed for since a diminutive kitten.
Gryla diminished further and on her death bed, having fed from the flesh of thousands of innocent Icelandic children, she asked me to lay by her bedside, lamely clutching tufts of my coat into her failing hands.
Drawing herself painfully upwards, she asked me to listen to her last words.
“I have done many wrongs, but I want you to know that it was with good intentions,” she croaked, breath quickly escaping her brittle frame, skeletal, a being composed of only edgy lines and juts.
“Go on, mother,” I encouraged. “You must tell me all, purge your soul. Ask for forgiveness from God himself,” I advised, having always held a profound belief in goodness existing within the world, to counter all the malevolence I had seen at play, and been part of myself.
“They made me do it. Leppalúði, my husband and The Yule Lads, our thirteen sons,” she gasped.
“What?” I queried, befuddled by such a notion that my mother had other children, human children, or near to, and a living husband. How had she kept this from me for so long?
“Leppalúði is a lazy oaf who wallows in this network of caves, never leaving, thinking of only fulfilling his gluttony. A red blood-flamed villainy burns constantly in his eyes. I chained myself to a devil. He has always refused to hunt and as I have aged, I grew less able to kidnap the number of children needed for the horde of sons I have borne alongside satiating Leppalúði’s gut. It became impossible to sustain which is why I created you, Jólakötturinn.
Not knowing it, you have been my only source of happiness, a true companion,” she confessed as real tears fell from her aged eyes.
“What will he do now?” I dared to question.
“He will drive you as I have done to kidnap children. His appetite is merciless and knows no end, nor that of our thirteen sons. Wickedness forms the backbone of all they do. Stealing from poor villagers,leaving rotten potatoes in children’s shoes instead of wished-for sweet treats,” She paused briefly, her lungs rattling with exertion.. “Your only escape from their hellish deceit is to do what I know you have always feared, Jólakötturinn.”
Moments stretched between us as her breathing slowed, and her heartbeat became barely a flicker.
Lowering myself closer to her dying mouth, she whispered the following fatal words:
“Eat him, Jólakötturinn. You must eat them all.”
*
Now you must decide for yourselves, whether I deserve the title of child killer, murderer, or cursed spirit. All these damnable accolades are fitting after my abhorred actions. I could bellow them for all of Iceland to hear.
I shall leave you with the following questions to ponder:
Is it a crime to eat the flesh of fourteen men? To this, I hope you have answered yes.
Yet, consider again:
Is it still considered a sin when paired with the thought that Icelandic children now live into adulthood, left alone to prosper and thrive after Yuletide?
I pace the Icelandic forgotten lands, eternally alone, frostbitten, and repentant, cursed with everlasting life, brewed by the witch, Gryla, herself. This, in and of itself, is enough of a punishment, is it not? There is no escape from the mind nor from the relentless torments of the bone-chilling cold.
I leave you, dear reader, to decide upon your judgement of me.
I am Jólakötturinn, a lost creature, chained to prowl ancient lands – for all time. May God have pity on my blighted soul.
