From the Land of Fire and Ice Margie Senechal

The Wilkinson Sisters, 1970

Last year, on Window Over the Sink, I wrote about Iceland’s Jolabokaflod, more commonly known as Iceland’s book flood on Christmas Eve. Somewhere in there I mentioned the Yule Lads and readers wanted to know more about them. So, that’s what I’m giving you this time.

My dad was stationed on the Icelandic Naval Base when I was seven and we lived there for two and half years. I celebrated two Christmases there—probably my most memorable. While we lived on the base, we were able to partake of local traditions as well as our own. The scent of Cardamom--as it's baked in their Icelandic Christmas cake--in the air still makes me think of Christmas and gives me an inner glow for the holidays.

 

When you’re a kid, Christmas can be a magical time and when you live in a land that still believes in elves, it’s even better.

 

Somewhere in my garage, I have the Navy paper informing our parents of the Yule Lads and for some reason, it only listed nine of the thirteen. I wonder if the earlier days coincided with another holiday?

 

To paraphrase the Icelandic tradition as I heard it—There are thirteen Yule lads who live in a cave with their witch mother, Gryla, her husband, and horrible cat. The Lads have Icelandic names that I couldn’t begin to pronounce, but we called them our own English variations. On the nine (or thirteen) days before Christmas, children will be visited by one of the lads and if you’re good, you’ll get a treat left in the shoe you’ve put in the window. And if you’re bad, they’ll knock it out the window. I’m not sure if we were supposed to leave our windows open during Iceland’s harsh winters.

 

My shoe was golden, elfin slipper. I remember it was quite ornate (which is exactly what my 7-year-old self thought). For the most part, if we were good, we got a piece of candy, maybe a small toy (jacks or marbles), or if really lucky, a golden Icelandic Kronur.

 

Our Yule lad tour began with Spoon Licker. His name like his brothers, is pretty much self-explanatory. He was followed by Pot Scraper, Bowl Licker, Door Slammer, Skyr Lover, Sausage Thief, Window Peeker, Door Sniffer, Meat Hook, and Candle Begger. If you look them up on Google, you find slightly different names for some of them, I’m just telling you what I knew them as.

 

We were most afraid of Window Peeker. There was one instance when we were having dinner and my younger sister, Debbie, refused to eat her peas. She was six and I was eight. Our youngest sister, Wendy, was nine months. Mom told Debbie that it was Window Peeker night.

 

Debbie went into a six-year-old full throttle panic at the thought she might have her golden slipper tossed out the window. She asked Dad if he wanted her peas, then Mom, Me, and finally, “Give them to the baby. Wendy can eat them.”

 

To this day, I wonder if it was really Window Peeker’s night to visit. I somehow doubt it.

 

On Christmas eve, we were to leave a candle in our shoe for Candle Begger. The candles he collected lit their cave for the year. I think we donated votives to the cause. I’m not sure how helpful those would be in a cave.

 

If you look them up online, you’re find some pretty gnarly images, especially of Gryla and her husband. You’ll also read that Gryla was a troll, but I always believed she was a witch. Maybe a troll witch?  I never thought of them as scary, but then I always ate my dinner. The picture I’ve selected show more what I pictured them as for all these years. But do look them up if you wish to learn more.

 

Merriest of Holidays to you all!

 

Margie Senechal is writer of Women’s fiction and romance with a slice of Magical Realism. She had a short story published in Once Upon a Book Club’s 2020 Advent Book. She lives in the PNW where she’ll probably get a wet Christmas, not a white one.

Margie

Time for a Book Flood by Margie Senechal

In the spring of 1969, my mom, my sister, and I joined my dad in Keflavik, Iceland, where he’d been stationed. He’d gone on ahead of us to find us a place to live because housing on base was scarce.

We began our stay in Iceland off-base living above an Icelandic family of five, who had three kids all around my sister’s and my ages. I remember playing in the snow under streetlights and my sister getting hit in the eye with a rock disguised as snowball by some neighbor kid.

Over the years, I’ve talked to other military kids who were also stationed abroad and collectively, one of the best experiences is the opportunity to celebrate holidays and traditions of both countries.

Christmas in Iceland was like a winter dream come true. I mean, we were actually living in place that was a close replica of the North Pole and they had 13 Santas. Or what they call Yule Lads. We called them Icelandic Santas.

And while counting down to Christmas via visits from the Yule Lads was wonderful—I also love their Jolabokaflod tradition. If you’re a reader who follows other writers or readers, I’m sure you’ve heard of it in recent years. Where a gift of a book is opened on Christmas Eve to read and enjoy a piece of chocolate with.

I received two books while I was there. And probably every Christmas since, although once we left Iceland, the book was just added to the pile under the tree to be opened upon Christmas Day.

The first book I received was The Snow Queen and I’d be lying if I said I’d never considered she might kidnap me from the bus stop on some very dark morning. And that I actually hoped it could happen.

I often wonder if Iceland’s love of books has something to do with the dark and cold nights of winter. I remember walking to the bus stop in pitch black darkness, only able to see the reflective lining of my fellow students as I headed to the wooden hut we huddled in to brace us from the frigid wind. For me, books and comic books provided evening entertainment as the wind whirled outside all around us.

My second book was Children of Many Lands, which was somewhat fitting since we were living around the world from where my story began in the Pacific NW. The Snow Queen is held together by black electric tape and is in an art style that has basically faded away as a byproduct of the sixties. The books made it back to the states and through a dozen+ states as we drove from New Jersey to Washington state. And they’ve remained with me since.

I read them to my youngest sister who was born in Iceland when I was eight. I read them to kids I babysat through school, I read them to my children and other people’s children that that passed through my home daycare.

For this year’s Christmas reading, I recommend Shannon Stacey’s Stranded in a Small Town Christmas, Jenn McKinley’s It Happened One Christmas Eve, Nan Reinhardt’s The Fireman’s Christmas Wish, and finally, especially, Amy E Reichert’s Once Upon a December.

Oh, the magic of words. And the magic of Christmas.

Margie Senechal lives in the Pacific Northwest where she loves being just a ninety-minute drive from the coast. She’s currently wrapping up her ninth novel which she hopes will be the one to finally see publication—one way or another. And she’s got another three, four, or a dozen in various stages of development so she’s never quite bored. She blogs every third Friday at Word Wranglers and you can find her on Facebook with just her name.

Let's Talk... by Liz Flaherty

It is amazing the things that invite discussion, you know it? Tonight, sitting at a table with two other writers, we have tried to figure out what is making noise in the woods beyond the deck of the house where we're staying. So far, we still don't know what it is. 

This afternoon, one of the other writers yelled because something was on her toe. She didn't know what it was or what to do. It wasn't all that funny until she figured out it was cake icing. Now it's hilarious and it's up in the air whose book it will appear in first. How it got there to begin with? Well, that's up in the air, too, but I'm all about making things up.

Duane and I talk about things upon which we disagree. Because, you know, we're married. We talk about them, over them, around them, We raise our voices, we say let's just not talk about this anymore and sometimes we lapse into cranky and slightly childish silence. When we start the discussion again, we realize what we should have known in the first place--we're mostly in agreement; we just say so in different words.

A funny thing about discussion is the memory of it. Because the participants never remember it the same way. The discussion of a discussion can be as enlightening--not to mention horrifying--as the discussion itself. Only when it sinks to the level of, "No, you said...I distinctly remember. I didn't say anything" is it time to give over to talking about the weather. 

If you've discussed politics or religion and the language gets inflammatory, give it a rest. You can't un-call those names because no matter how often you say, "That's not what I meant," it's still what you said.

This morning, at this table full of laptops on this retreat in the mountains I'm sharing with writer friends, we've talked about being fixers and pleasers, about Facebook, about what kind of wives we were, and (incidentally) about the stories we're writing. We've talked about the books that most deeply affected us--Little Women; after all, I AM Jo March--about how long books have affected us and about books we haven't read and written yet. 

With discussion comes learning. Comes truth--although not always absolute, because subjectivity often rears its head. Comes gasping laughter and gut-wrenching grief. In Steel Magnolias, Truvy said, "I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence."

That is, I believe, what lies at the bottom of every discussion well. As long as minds and hearts stay open, talking about it will help most everything. (My husband doesn't agree with this, by the way.) But at the end of the back-and-forth meeting of opinion, you need to be able to share tears and laughter. 

It's something we're not all good at, isn't it? Maybe we should try harder. Have a great week. Talk to people. Be nice to somebody.

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Commercial...don't forget Window Over the Sink, the book, is available from most online bookstores. Signed copies can also be found at Anita's Boutique and at Black Dog Coffee in Logansport. You can also order them from me at the following link. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/11XQqum2Ohak3MXMdDTGarilThRllp7y5XTiSf60bM0o/edit Thank you for your support, always! 

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