The Swedish town where every Christmas brings goat arson
The parable of the Gävle Goat.
Happy oh god is it really only two weeks until Christmas I really need to do some shopping sh*t sh*t sh*t. Anyway! Here I am, back again, with another bit of free and festive content. This one’s an edited extract from my first book, The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything, which would, as it happens, make the ideal Christmas gift.
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The Swedish town where every Christmas brings goat arson
Julbocken/Joulupukki, the “Yule Goat”, is a Swedish tradition which seems to have its origins in the pagan tradition that thunder god Thor’s chariot was drawn across the sky by a pair of goats. Once upon a time, the goat was scary and demanded you give it presents; then it was nice and gave them out; now it’s basically just Santa, but mystifyingly named after a goat.
This is, I must say, one of my favourite Christmas traditions – partly because it’s just so, at least to my goat-free English eyes, bizarre, but mostly because there are so many different variations upon it. One Scandinavian Christmas tradition involves an annual visitation from a gift-giving goat. A second involves adorning your Christmas tree with goat-based ornaments, and a third involves constructing a giant version of the second out of straw and displaying it in the town centre.
A fourth, at least in one town, involves setting fire to the third, even though it is very definitely illegal.
Some background here. In 1966, Stig Gavlén, an advertising consultant living in the eastern Swedish city of Gävle, had the bright idea that what his town really needed was a massive straw goat. The first Gävle goat was 13 metres tall, seven metres long and weighed three tonnes. It stood proudly in Slottstorget – Castle Square – for the whole of December.
Then, on New Year’s Eve, someone burned it down.No matter: the festive season was nearly over, the goat was insured, and, anyway, these things happen if you build a giant goat made out of straw. So everyone chalked it up to experience, and a group of local businessmen agreed to sponsor next year’s goat.
All was fine for a couple of years, but then on New Year’s Eve 1969, someone burned the goat down again. In 1970, someone burned it down again – this time, instead of lasting for a month, it lasted a mere six hours. After that, the businessmen, a bit sick of seeing their goat go up in flames, pulled their sponsorship. But someone else took over, which was great, because it provided the thrilling opportunity for someone to smash the 1971 goat to pieces.
The 1972 one collapsed; the authorities suspected sabotage. In 1976, no suspicion was necessary, because someone literally drove into it.
In 1978, the goat was smashed to pieces again. In 1979, it was burned to the ground before even being assembled. A second goat was built, and, just to mix things up a bit, someone smashed it to pieces. Again.
To sum up the 1970s, not a single one of the giant Yule Goats constructed in the town of Gävle during that tumultuous decade survived the entire festive season. In 1981, for the first time in 12 years, the goat did survive, but if it was expecting its luck to have changed it was in for a nasty shock the following year when someone burned it to the ground again.
In 1985, the goat, for the first time listed in The Guinness Book of Records – 12.5 metres tall! – was protected by a two-metre-high metal fence, a private security firm, and a detachment from the local military. It still burned down in January.
In 1986, apparently regretting their exclusion from all the goat burning action, the local business group decided to build their own goat again. From this point on, each year, there are two goats. That means there are now twice as many goats to burn.
By 1988, the burning of the goat had become such a tradition that, thousands of miles away in England, local bookmakers were offering odds on when exactly the goat would burn. Disappointingly for gamblers, that year it survived, but the good people of Gävle made up for it the following year when, again, someone burned its components to the ground before they’d even been assembled into a goat. Public donations were collected to fund a replacement, which made it as far as January. Guess what happened next.
In 1992, a particularly good year for goat-burning, the two goats were burned down three times because one was rebuilt after the first burning. On 11 December 1998, the town was hit by a massive blizzard, and the volunteers guarding the goat headed for shelter on the assumption that you can’t burn a goat in a snowstorm. This assumption turned out to be wrong.
In 2001, a 51-year-old tourist from Cleveland, Ohio, served 18 days in prison after attempting to burn the goat down. His defence was that he didn’t realise it was illegal, he just thought it was a local tradition. After 35 years of this stuff, it’s easy to wonder if he perhaps had a point.
In 2005, two guys succeeded in burning the heavily guarded goat to the ground by shooting a flaming arrow at it. They escaped, because one was dressed as Santa Claus and the other as the Gingerbread Man.
By 2006, the authorities were storing their giant straw goat in a secret location. They needed a secret location for their giant straw goat.
The tradition continues to this day. In all, something like half the goats built in Gävle since 1966 have burned down, and barely one in three has survived the festive season unscathed.
There are two lessons here. One is that festive traditions are pretty mutable. The Gävle authorities think the tradition is erecting the giant Yule Goat. Everyone else thinks the tradition is trying to set fire to it. These traditions have co-existed, sort of, for over half a century.
The other lesson is that people really like setting fire to giant straw goats.
The article above is an extract from my book, The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything. You can buy a copy here.
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God bless us, every one.
This extract reminds me The Day Today’s that pool sketch.
Some slight confusion. It's true that in Finnish, they kept the name "yule goat" (Joulupukki) for Santa. But in Swedish, Santa is called Jultomten, the yule gnome, which is just as stupid but in a different way.