The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year (6 page)

Scald and king’s men continue to the next farmyard

where they are again turned away, this time by an old

woman who calls Sigvat a “wretch” and informs him that

“they are holding an offering to the elves.” Her use of the third person suggests she may be a servant sent by the family to get rid of the unwanted visitors. We can only wish

she had opened the door, for the compulsive versifier Sig-

vat would surely have left us a detailed, if biased, description of the ceremony had he been allowed inside to witness it. As it is, we can only wonder. How was the family dressed?

In workaday clothes or in special garments reserved for the occasion? Did lights burn within? How was the table laid,

or was all the action going on in the enclosed courtyard?

We cannot lay all of the blame at the feet of the “old

hag,” as Sigvat calls her, for Sigvat’s behavior is just as intolerable. Though an Icelander and a Christian, Sigvat is presumably of Norwegian descent. He should there-

fore have been familiar with the
Dísablót
or “sacrifice to the
dísir
” which his own heathen grandparents and possibly even parents would have celebrated at “winter-nights”

38 At Home with the Elves

at the same time of year. The Dísablót took place before an altar dedicated to the dísir, ancestral female spirits who are the precursors of our fairy godmothers and a few of our

witches too. There is a lot of overlap between the dísir and the norns who sat spinning among the roots of the World

Tree. Like the dísir, the norns occasionally made house calls but all in all were considered to be more aloof than the

dísir. Sometimes the dísir behaved more like bloodthirsty

valkyries than fairy godmothers, and, in fact, the Dísablót altar was reddened with blood, though we are not sure

whose. In the
Saga of Hervor and King Heidrek
, the Dísablót is presided over by one Princess Álfhild of Álfheim, so it is possible that the Álfablót and Dísablót were precisely the same thing. Had Sigvat shown a little respect for the traditions of Hov, he might have been allowed to slip quietly inside and take part in the feast.

He might even have been asked to play his harp, if harp

he had, and if his fingers were not too stiff with cold, for it was not unheard of for a Christian to join in heathen rituals in times of need. In the
Saga of Erik the Red
, Sigvat’s fellow Icelander, Gudrid, now a Christian, is persuaded to assist the prophetess Thorbjorg by chanting the magical formulae

she had learned as a child. Unfortunately, there was no such syncretism that evening in Hov, and Sigvat is turned away

by four more bonders before he gives up his search for hospitality. When he finally arrives at his ultimate destination, the hall of Ragnvald the Jarl, he is rewarded with a gold ring and sympathy, so you really can’t feel sorry for Sigvat.

Was the Álfablót unique to that district of Sweden? The

only other reference we have to a sacrifice made to the elves
At Home with the Elves 39

occurs in
Kormak’s Saga
. Here, a witch directs the wounded Thorvald to invoke the healing power of the elves by pouring bull’s blood on a nearby elf mound and making a feast

of the meat for the elves dwelling within. Could the Hov-

ians have been sacrificing something more precious than

livestock? Human sacrifice was certainly not unknown at

this time in this part of the world, but had that been the case, then surely the farm folk would have dissembled in

front of the Christian Sigvat, pleading sickness in the house rather than announcing the occasion of a sacrifice. And

whereas a portion of the livestock had to be slaughtered at the onset of winter anyway, humans were valuable members of the workforce and not to be dispatched lightly.

So why the secrecy? The celebrants may have been in

the process of inducing a trance state in one or more of the family members or even of a visiting prophetess like Thorbjorg. The speaking of prophecies serves as the highlight of several feasts in the Old Norse sagas. Much work went into preparing both the speaker and the space, so if this were the case, it is no wonder the old woman was short with Sigvat.

She would have been eager to learn what the future held for her and therefore anxious not to break the spells that had been woven about the scrying platform.

Ironically, the man who sent Sigvat on his errand in the

first place, the Christian King Olav, was in some respects an elf himself. Though Olav denied even the possibility, a few of his followers believed him to be the reincarnation of an earlier king, Olav Geirstader who, upon his death and

laying “in howe” (i.e., in his grave mound), received both offerings and the epithet of
álf
or “elf ” after his name. It
40 At Home with the Elves

is also interesting to note that Hov lay just to the east of the limits of a kingdom still known in the early Middle

Ages as Álfheim. Scholars argue that the name has noth-

ing to do with elves but refers instead to the bed of gravel that lies beneath the tillable soil of this district, a fact that Tolkien fans will quickly forget when they hear that, in the ninth century, Álfheim was ruled by a king named Gandálf.

According to one of the
Fornaldar Sagas
or, “Sagas of Ancient Days,” the inhabitants of this earthly Álfheim were so fair of face that only the
risir
outshone them. As to who the risir were, I suppose that is another story.

Like Christmas Itself

You probably have to clean house before Thanksgiving any-

way, so why not host your own Álfablót this year? (Elves,

like most Christmas sprits, love a clean house.) As wit-

nessed at Hov, the door need not be opened to anyone out-

side the family—anyone living, that is—so you won’t have

to do much shopping or decorating. Now, the question to

ask is: How would the elves wish to be fêted?

If you are already following a Norse or Saxon Pagan

path, you may be able to commune with the elves and ask

them yourself. The rest of us must turn to the old tales for clues. One of the most helpful is the Norwegian fairy tale,

“The Finn King’s Daughter.” Here we have a Finnish prin-

cess playing the starring role in a Norwegian story whose

roots have been traced back to Jutland in Denmark, a pan-

At Home with the Elves 41

Scandinavian folktale if ever there was one.7 All that’s missing is the Swedish element, but I say the Swedes missed the chance to put in their two
Krona
when they shut the door in Sigvat’s face back in 1017.

Although she is not identified as an elf in the tale as

it was collected by Rikard Berge in 1900, the Finn King’s

daughter bears such a close resemblance to the Álfar that

she must once have been one. Here are the bare bones of

the story:

Before going off to war, the Finn King encloses his

beloved daughter inside a mound, mostly because he’s caught her exchanging glances with the new serving boy. When the

princess and her nine handmaidens are wel and truly shut

up in their well-appointed house of earth, the king departs, never to return. The princess and her maids begin at once to try to dig their way out. The effort takes nine years and the life of each of her maids. At last, the princess claws her way out into the now unfamiliar countryside. While she is rambling round the forest, lost, the king’s men final y return to the mound to release her, the Finn King himself having died of sickness. They find nothing except, presumably, the bones of her handmaidens.

After a search of the kingdom turns up no princess, a trol woman presents herself at the Finn King’s hall and claims

to be the missing girl. She immediately starts planning her wedding to the serving boy who, by this time, has revealed himself as an exiled prince—of course!—and, having earlier 7. “The Finn King’s Daughter” is an example of what is known to folklorists as Tale Type 870: The Princess Confined in the Mound, and is found outside Scandinavia as wel . See Reidar Christiansen’s
Folktales of Norway.

42 At Home with the Elves

earned the Finn King’s deathbed blessing, has taken up residence in the hal . He goes along with the wedding plans (People change, don’t they? And this girl had been in a
mound
for nine years!), but he is clearly not looking forward to the upcoming nuptials.

At last, the real princess emerges from the forest, chil-

blained and emaciated. Rather than declare her true iden-

tity, she takes a job as a maid at her old home and helps the troll woman to pass a series of tests by which the prince

is hoping to expose her as an impostor. We are not told

why the real princess lets it drag on for so long, but eventually the troll woman is tripped up by an incident involving a pair of gloves, and the Finn King’s daughter takes her proper place at the prince’s side.

Those are the bare bones; the elvishness emerges in the

details of the story. Unlike the trollish impostor who can barely thread a needle, our plucky princess is a whiz at sew-ing and the textile arts, both elvish traits in nineteenth century folklore—think of “Rumpelstiltskin” and “The

Shoemaker and the Elves.” She’s also good with the horses, like the Scandinavian household sprites that mucked out

the stables and braided the horses’ manes.

Elves were believed to dwell in mounds, and it was to

these mounds that mortals went to offer sacrifice. In the

opening of “The Finn King’s Daughter,” the father stocks

the mound with “food and drink, clothing and cups and

vessels.” The poor girls are going to need all these things, of course, but these are also exactly the sorts of gifts that were laid with the dead in howe in pagan days. (Celtic fairies

and brownies were highly offended by gifts of clothing, but
At Home with the Elves 43

their Nordic counterparts expected them.) Other than these basic provisions, the Finn King does not take into account any practical considerations such as a conduit for fresh air or waste disposal system. And would it not have been simpler and far more humane for him to have appointed a

guardian to look after his daughter in his absence? Could

he not have sent her to stay with relatives or at the very least have banished the serving boy? The answer is no, because

practical considerations are for the living, and as soon as she enters the mound, the princess enters the elvish realm: the realm of the dead.

So there they are, the princess and her nine doomed

handmaidens, without door or smoke hole such as Gard-

ner’s euhemeristic pixies enjoyed. They blink at one

another in panic as, within, the candlelight glances off the silver cups and plates and, without, the last shovelfuls of clay are tamped down above their heads. Those nine years

inside the mound must have seemed like a lifetime to the

princess, and when she finally scrabbles her way out, it

really does seem like a lifetime or more has passed. Even

before he departed, the Finn King had ordered the mound

leveled—suggesting that the “living” space was very deep

inside the earth—and sown over with grass. By the time the princess breaks out, the forest has taken over the razed site, obliterating all familiar features of the landscape. Like Rip van Winkle, she recognizes no one at her old home, with

the exception of the former serving boy, and no one rec-

ognizes her. Our princess is not simply a lost daughter; she is one of the mighty dead, coming home to a world much

changed. Toward the end of the tale, she and her prince

44 At Home with the Elves

enjoy a church wedding, so it is obviously a Christian world to which she has returned. Originally, she would have been a heathen princess, most likely also a priestess, buried along with a sacred number of her servants and the finest of her worldly goods and ritual paraphernalia.

But where was our princess all that time the Finn King’s

men were scouring the forest for her? It turns out she was attending a sort of Álfablót. Devastated and disoriented, she is taken in for a time by a party of charcoal burners. This is the first human company she has had since her last handmaiden died. The charcoal burners offer her a bed inside

their leafy shelter, a bowl of rabbit stew and a seat close by the fire. The story tells us, “it seemed like Christmas itself to her after what she had been through.”8 What did they

talk about there in the firelight? Conversation would not

have been easy, for the princess’s courtly speech was probably no more closely related to the deep woodsmen’s jargon

than the language of the Light Elves was to that of the Dark Elves. What mattered was the treatment she received.

Heat, light, food and a human welcome: keep these in

mind if you want to host the Álfar. Schedule your “Christ-

mas for the Elves” somewhere in that empty stretch of time between Halloween and Martinmas (November 11), or

even between Martinmas and Thanksgiving so they won’t

have to share their special day. The elves are bearers of light, so if you cannot manage a full moon for your feast, a wax-ing crescent is better than a waning three-quarter moon.

8. Had it actual y been Christmas, the charcoal burners would not have been in the forest to meet her, for charcoal burning was done only during the windless days of summer.

At Home with the Elves 45

Just as the princess had to claw her way out of the earth, wander the forest barefoot and cross a river on the back of a wolf, your guests will have completed a long and ardu-ous journey. They have left their usual haunts and howes in order to join you, so greet them warmly. I suggest the following: “Let them come who wish to come, and let them