 If one Santa Claus is good, thirteen must be great, right? You may want to rethink that theory if you’re visiting Iceland for the holidays. That’s because the Yule Lads, that island nation’s gang of sort-of-St. Nicks, will be making their mischievous way across the land. Icelandic folklore holds that these bearded fellas are the sons of evil trolls, and leave either presents or rotten potatoes in children’s shoes, depending on each kid’s behavior during the preceding year. So yes, they bring gifts and sport long white beards, but the Yule Lads differ in some major ways from your typical Santa. They aren’t exactly benevolent—they’re rather more impish than jolly.
Some of the Lads’ names give away their idiosyncratic brand of hijinks: Spoon-Licker, Pot-Scraper, Door-Slammer, and Sausage-Swiper, for example. Others lean even more eccentric: Doorway Sniffer, Skyr-Gobbler, and a Lad named Sheep-Cote Clod. It all leads us to wonder just how weird and wonderful Iceland’s holiday revelry can get.
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