Happy Times in Norway

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THE NIGHT BEFORE LITTLE CHRISTMAS EVE, THEAAND Mother worked in the kitchen until long after midnight . The headcheeses and the pigs' feet had been stowed in the brine, the last cooky boxes were closed and carried up to the little storage closet, and Thea had set the sponge for bread and coffeecake. Now she had thrown open the window to rid the kitchen of its cooking smells. "Does Madam see? I really think it is beginning to freeze." They went out on the stoop. The skywas black and filledwith sparklingstars. They stepped down into the garden to feel the soil—yes, it was beginning to set. There was a crackling under their feet as they walked and Njord, who had slipped out with them, raced asif shot from a cannon, clear to the foot of the garden, to bark wildly at absolutely nothing out on the road, only 1 9 3 H A P P Y TIMES IN N O R W A Y to show that he washappy that winter had really come. The hillside was white with frost next morning. Mother was going downtown to the market place, and Hans and Tulla were allowed to go along in the car. The market place was crowded with farmers selling wood, Christmas trees, and sheavesof grain. Hans was allowed to help Mother choose a Christmas tree and to pick out the handsomest sheaves of yellow, heavyheaded grain. It is the custom in Norway to put a sheaf of grain outside the windows at Christmastime. Thousands of years agothe Stone Age people in Norway, when they had learned to grow grain, believed that the spirit that lived in the earth, and made things grow, fled when the grain was cut. It hid, they thought, in the last remaining stalks, and when these had been cut down, this spirit of growth was thought to be imprisoned in them. That was why the peasants laid aside the last sheaf and kept it. In midwinter, when the earth was frozen hard and covered with snow, and there was a frightening drumming at night from the ice on the sea, and trees cracked in the cold, and it was dark nearly all day—and daylightlasted only that short while from the time the sun, looking ill and feverishly red, crept up over the edge of the forest to hang low over the earth a short while, before dropping down to hide itself again 20 M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S —then the Stone Age people fetched this last sheaf of grain and hung it near the place they lived. The spirit in it helped the sun become strong again, and once more warm and light the earth to triumph over evil winter. Then the spirit returned to the thawing fields to bring the people a newharvest ofblessed grain. . . . From Asia came stories about powerful gods that ruled life on earth and the fate of men. The one who ruled over the heavens they called Ty, or Ull the Magnificent. One they spoke of only as the Lord— Froy or Baldr—who ruled over the fertility of the earth and saw to it that animals and mankind had offspring. Sometimes he showed himself to people in the form of a boar with golden tusks and golden bristles. That was why swine came to be sacred and why people sacrificed swine to the god of fertility when at midwinter they tried to influence the powers that would bring back spring. Ever since it has been the custom in Norway to slaughter a pig for Christmas—and thus they do to this day. But the best god of all was Thor. With that heavy hammer ofhis he slew trolls and evil things thatwanted to wreck the settled countryside. Thor always heard the promises brides and bridegrooms gave each other, and all the bargains and agreements men made. Traitors, liars, and faithless ones could be sure diat 2 I H A P P Y TIMES IN N O R W A Y someday Thor's revenge would smite them. His wife was Sif, with the golden hair that one sometimes saw flashing on the horizon just before Thor came driving in his chariot across the vaulted sky, asthunder boomed and the rain streamed. . . . Thus, as though Norwegians still believed in gods and goddesses, they kept up the custom of...