T is for Tröll sem eru í Treyjasum!

Apologies to any Icelandic Loyal Readers who may have just chocked on their elevenses, for my miserable attempt at a line of Icelandic grammar, and even I know (now) Treyja are really cardigans not jumpers, but sometimes my desire to be a clever-dick outweighs any need to be more sensible!

 

More Trolls from Brian's visit to Iceland, and these are your every-day, regular tröll, not seasonal guys, and it seems even the locals need jumpers to meet the weather in those northern climes! The jumpers themselves are part of the resin moulding, but I think the little woolly hats are actually real, knitted apparel, while, obviously, hatless tröll have too much hair for hats! More on the hair in the final part of Islensku tröll.

L is for Leifur Eiríksson

Another instalment of Brian Berke's shots from Iceland (he had terrible flu, and I think we're lucky to have these shots), and we're looking at Leifur Eiríksson, known to us as Lief Erikson, or Lief the Lucky, son of Erik the Red and as a famous Viking explorer, who hailed from the shores of Iceland, and is accepted to have discovered North America (for Europeans, probably where modern Canada is), some centuries before the European genocides and colonisation!

 

Struck by the strange, angled, sub-base, and identical pose, I assumed they must be depicting a specific statute, and a bit of a search, left me fully gen'ed-up on the statue created by American artist Alexander Stirling Calder, in Reykjavík, in the 1930's!

 

Obviously, available in a gilded or plain-metal finish, and probably a base-metal or tin-alloy of some kind, and issued in two sizes, it's definitely the sort of thing you might pick up in a charity shop at some point?

Y is for Yule Lads!

It's always fun finding out how other people do Christmas, because it's not all the modern iconography of Albert, Prince-consort, The Saxe-Coburg-Windsors or Coke Cola, endured by the English-speaking world, with or without crackers! And I well remember nearly having a fight with Krampus and his 'pals' in an Austrian pension one cold night in December!

 

In Iceland, they have the Yule Lads, a bunch of Icelandic Troll types (more to come on them), who fool about at this time of year, each having a day between the 12th and the 24th, in the lead-up to the big day, almost an half-advent of annoyance! Brian Berke, roving reporter, sent some shots he took in Iceland, and off down the rabbit-hole I went!

 

They actually leave little gifts in children's shoes, the equivalent of our stockings, but lesser, yet daily! However, if you've been bad, you might get a rotten potato, or a sour-onion!

 

This is Pottaskefill (Pot-Scraper, December 16th), he scrapes the food remains from the pots and pans!

 

While Skyrgámur (Skyr-Gobbler, December 19th) loves skyr (Icelandic traditional yogurt-type dairy-produce), and if you don't leave some out for him, he'll just steal it!

 

Ketkrókur (Meat-Hook, December 23th), he steals meat, gripping it with a hook! Another steals sausages!

 

Þvörusleikir (Spoon-Licker, December 15th), he steals spoons to lick them clean, but there isn’t much food left on spoons, so he is supposed to be scrawny, this one looks well-accommodated with bounteous spoons! Presumably, the spoons quietly reappear in the drawers when little people have forgotten them?

 

You'll have to Google the rest yourselves! And there are a couple of equally (supposedly) execrable parents and a dodgy cat! Many thanks to Brian for the introduction, to something completely different!