Julenisse, my final opinion

daniel van eijmeren daniel at maisie.ow.nl
Mon May 29 13:04:41 CEST 1995


MIKE:

Once again me about the gnomes. This is all I could find about 
Julenisse in a book about Christmas:

JULENISSE

In Denmark Santa Claus (Julemand) has gnomes who help him during 
Christmas. They're called Julenisser and they appear in the Danish 
saga's and legends for centuries.
A small Nisse wears clothes of self-spinned, not-bleached grey wool. 
He has a bright-red cap and lives (as they say) in farms and barns. 
In Denmark it's a usage for years to leave a bowl with porridge or 
milk for the Nisser on Christmas-Eve.
Today the Nisser fully belong to Christmas and they're imagined as 
friendly gnomes who help on the farm and love children. But don't 
forget the bowl, because the Nisser can get very angry if they don't 
get what they want.

That's all I know. So my final opinion is that the gnomes in the 
story really are those Nisser.

(Like you said, if you/I want to talk about it further, we'd better 
do it the silent way: in private mail.)

---Daniel 



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