A dreadful Christmas cat from Iceland.

The Jólakötturinn.

By Bette Belle Blanchard.

If you are in Iceland at Christmastime, beware… For the dreaded Jólakötturinn will silently and stalk past your bedroom windows until early Christmas morning. This feline spirit will be keeping a close eye on any threadbare socks, old moth-eaten shirts and jackets. Like an ancient and mythic officer of ‘The Style Police’, he can’t stand the sight of an elbow-less jumper, or the thought of a big toe poking out the end of an old sock. 

“It has to go. I simply cannot abide this any longer”. He tuts and purrs. A rumble in his gut purrs along with him. He likes to survey his prey, to analyse the most efficient way to eat as much as possible. Shall he start with the dark meat? Or shall he save that for later? The dark meat is the fattiest and juiciest after all.

It really does depend on how hungry he is, or how much your odd socks offend this old, fat and formidable cat. If you’re lucky, your dinner could be sufficient, and he may leave you with your life. Other times he may not be so forgiving.

Death by cat seems to me to be an oddly specific terror created solely to whip up fear in the communities of Iceland. Belief in The Jólakötturinn is thought by historians to stem from a time when the owners of early settlement farms in rural Iceland sought to encourage the workers there to finish their allotted tasks before Yuletide. It has been speculated that those who worked the hardest were rewarded with new clothes, and so those who didn’t work as hard would consequently have none, and therefore be subject to the terrors of Jólakötturinn. He can also be seen to inspire (the fear) to give more generously during the Christmas, to protect your loved ones from the dribbling jaws of the seething Jólakötturinn.

Jolakotturinn, Illustration by Bette Belle Blanchard

Jolakotturinn, Illustration by Bette Belle Blanchard

So if you are taking a Yuletide trip to this popular holiday destination, make sure you wear your best xmas sox to bed, or there may be a biting and a tearing of needle toothed savagery as this Icelandic cryptid takes umbrage at your inelegant and ragged hose….

Björk recorded a song about Jólakötturinn:

His hair sharp as needles 
his back was high and bulgy
and claws on his hairy paw
were not a pretty sight

Therefore the women competed
to rock and sow and spin
and knitted colourful clothes
or one little sock

For the cat could not come
and get the little children
they had to get new clothes
from the grownups

Björk Guðmundsdóttir- Jólakötturinn - Hvít Er Borg Og Bær - Icelandic Christmas Cat - (1987).

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