Julenisse and the Jolasveinar

*** Note: about 3 stanzas short of completion. Working on it. Please don't negative review based on lack of conclusion, will be here shortly.


Play your harp, long bearded one,
Oh God of poets, dear Bragi, unfurl your runic tongue.
Send those writers of destiny, the dsir, the Norns
To bless my bardic role, and see my song is sung,
Cracked lips of mine, tell once more
That epic of the Julenisse from afar,
and his triumph over those spirits of the cold,
The thirteen wicked beasts of the Jolasveinar.

Long ago, in the lands of Thule,
Back when Winter cold contained no joy nor cheer,
In the jagged mountains near Laki and Grimsvotn
lived a band of ice trolls all mortals did fear.
In caves of snow they slept,
With snores of thunder and howls like the bitter winds,
On a bed of bones their shriveled bodies lay,
From those children, who at their hands, had met their ends.

Every Christmastime these trolls awoke,
One by one as the icy vetur waned the year's close,
Ears pricked at the sounds of innocent voices,
And their stirrings, led by hunger, did grow.
They always came at night,
After the villagers had gone to rest,
They sought out and ate any child they could find,
But it is said that they liked the naughty ones best.

First there was Stekkjarstaur
Who arose every eleventh of December,
Four feet tall, flinty eyed, with knobby wooden legs
Gimpy was this creature’s nickname all remember.
Before this first troll began his feast,
It was known to find and suckle the farmer's sheep,
When that was done, it'd seek out the farmers son,
and eat all but the boy's toes, which on a necklace it'd keep.

Next there was Giljaguar
Descending the mountain on the twelfth.
With long gray hair that dragged the ground,
Came loping this demonic old elf.
It'd hide in the stables,
As as the milkmaid finished her daily chore,
Waiting to snatch up a young stableboy,
And leave only a spot of blood upon the floor.

Then Stufur, he was the third,
That tiny troll, smaller than a stick of butter,
Would come down the mountain, squeeze through a crack in the door,
and hide and watch the children play with their mother.
It'd wait in the kitchen,
For the night to drift into a softened slumber,
Until a toddler sneaked, tippy toe, towards the sweets,
Then it'd jump out of hiding to feed its hunger.

This continued thirteen days,
One Jolasveinar rising after another,
There was Pottasleikir, known as the Pot Licker,
Who had fondness for pairs of sisters and brothers.
There was Huroaskellir,
That slammer of doors, who scared the kids to death first,
And there was Bjugnakraekir, the sausage snatcher
Who artfully turned fat boys into bratwurst.

These trolls and others came down,
Hunting all the children for thirteen days each year.
Until Christmas was no longer a happy holiday,
But a season that every parent most feared.
Then, out from the Eastern shores,
A young stranger came to the cursed lands of Thule,
Nicolai he was called, a clever toymaker,
Our hero who would prove the Jolasveinar fools.


[hero finds out, makes proclaimation]


Donning a thick coat of red,
And riding a reindeer mounted sleigh up the slopes,
Nicolai trusted his clever wits and sly ways,
As the people, in that man, invested their hopes.
Up he went to the high peak,
Somewhere near Laki and Grimsvotn it is said,
In the deepest ice caves beneath a sheer cliff face,
He found them sleeping atop that mound of the dead.

“Jolasveinar,” he bellowed,
And surprised, these ugly things, awoke with a grin,
What a foolish mortal had wandered in, they thought,
To their icy lair near Laki and Grimsvotn.
Those little beasts felt no fear,
For fierce was their nature, and wicked their desire.
Fangs poked like rotted wooden stakes from slobbered maws,
As they thought of manflesh roasting over a fire.

Surrounding poor Nicolai,
These devilish beasts began to smack blackened lips,
But our hero stood fast and smiled so knowingly,
The Jolasveinar began to suspect a trick.
“Attack me if you dare, imps,”
Our hero challenged them, “inhale your final breath,
Come charging, fang and claw, with screaming battle cry,
But do so knowing it will surely be your death.

“For standing here before you,
Is a holy saint of children from distant lands,
Not a mortal, but a guardian of the night,
For a sacred spirit, Julenisse I am.
Skeptical were these fiendish imps,
"What proof have you?" they asked.
They crept closer towards that defenseless fellow,
And our hero seemed doomed to fail his noble task.

"This cloak of mine is my proof,” he exclaimed,
“Dyed red by the blood of children-eating trolls,
This white frill upon my sleeves I've made from their beards,
And this jolly belly of mine is filled with all their souls.”
The trolls froze in their tracks,
For his jolly belly was certainly quite large,
Terror began to fill the hearts of those foul tricksters,
and soon overwhelmed their will to charge.

"Oh mighty Julenisse!"
Cried out the once fearsome beasts known as the Jolasveinar.
"Do not to steal our blood and souls and beards,
Please, have mercy for the wretched creatures that we are."