A (, ), (), , or () is a household spirit from Nordic folklore which has always been described as a small human-like creature wearing a red cap and gray clothing, doing house and stable chores, and expecting to be rewarded at least once a year around winter solstice (yuletide), with the gift of its favorite food, porridge.
Although there are several suggested etymologies, nisse may derive from the given name Niels or Nicholas, introduced 15–17th century (or earlier in medieval times according to some), hence nisse is cognate to Saint Nicholas and related to the Saint Nicholas Day gift giver to children. In the 19th century the Scandinavian nisse became increasingly associated with the Christmas season and Christmas gift giving, its pictorial depiction strongly influenced by American Santa Claus in some opinion, evolving into the .
The nisse is one of the most familiar creatures of Scandinavian folklore, and he has appeared in many works of Scandinavian literature.
The nisse is frequently introduced to English readership as an "elf" or "gnome"; the Christmas nisse often bears resemblance to the garden gnome.
Nomenclature
The word nisse (plural nisser) is a pan-Scandinavian term. Its modern usage in Norway into the 19th century is evidenced in Asbjørnsen's collection. The Norwegian is also equated to nisse or tomte. In Danish the form ("house nisse") also occurs.
Other synonyms include the Swedish names and (cf. ). The names and ("tomte farmer") have occurred in Sweden and parts of Norway close to Sweden. The Finnish is borrowed from Swedish (cf. ), but the Finnish spirit has gained a distinct identity and is no longer synonymous. There is also the (lit. "house lot man") but this is a literary Christmas elf.
There are also localized appellations, in and in Gudbrandsdalen and Nordland regions of Norway (cf. ).
Other variants include the Swedish names and ; also in Sweden (and Norwegian regions proximate to Sweden) and ("tomte farmer"), (cf. ) and (. "mound man", etc.).
English translations The term nisse in the native Norwegian is retained in Pat Shaw Iversen's English translation (1960), appended with the parenthetical remark that it is a household spirit.
Various English language publications also introduce the nisse as an "elf" or "gnome".
In the past, (1881) chose to substitute nisse with "brownie". 's dictionary (1927) glossed nisse as 'goblin' or 'hobgoblin'.
In the English editions of the Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales the Danish word has been translated as 'goblin', for example, in the tale "The Goblin at the Grocer's".
Dialects Forms such as have been seen as dialect. Aasen noted the variant form to be prevalent in the Nordland and Trondheim areas of Norway, and the tale "Tuftefolket på Sandflesa" published by Asbjørnsen is localized in Træna Municipality in Nordland. Another synonym is tunkall ("yard fellow") also found in the north and west.
Thus ostensibly prevails in eastern Norway (and adjoining Sweden), although there are caveats attached to such over-generalizations by linguist . It might also be conceded that is more a Swedish term than Norwegian. and note 28. In Scania, Halland and Blekinge within Sweden, the tomte or nisse is also known as (i.e 'good nisse').
Reidar Thoralf Christiansen remarked that the "belief in the is confined to the south and east" of Norway, and theorized the nisse was introduced to Norway (from Denmark) in the 17th century, but there is already mention of "Nisse pugen" in a Norwegian legal tract c. 1600 or earlier, and (1938) believed the introduction to be as early as 13 to 14c. and note 35. The Norsk Allkunnebok encyclopedia states less precisely that nisse was introduced from Denmark relatively late, whereas native names found in Norway such as tomte, , tufte, tuftekall, , etc., date much earlier.Also quoted in
Etymology It has repeatedly been conjectured that nisse might be a variant of "nixie" or but detractors including Jacob Grimm note that a nixie is a water sprite and its proper Dano-Norwegian cognate would be nøkk, not nisse.
According to Grimm nisse was a form of Niels (or German: ), like various house sprites that adopted human given names, and was therefore cognate to St. Nicholas, and related to the Christmas gift-giver. Indeed, the common explanation in Denmark is that nisse is the diminutive form of Niels, as Danes in the 19th century used to refer to a nisse as "" or (, literally "yard/farmstead dweller" is also name for a sprite).
An alternate etymology derives nisse from Old Norse , meaning "dear little relative".:"".
The ("homestead man"), ("farm guardian"), and ("yard fellow") bear names that associated them with the farmstead. The Finnish is also borrowed from Swedish tomte, but "later tradition no longer consider these identical".
Additional synonyms Faye also gives Dano-Norwegian forms or .; tr. These are echoed by the Swedish , Norwegian Nynorsk .
Norwegian (cf. ) is a synonym for nisse, or has become conflated with it. Likewise is a synonym. Also the ("farmyard-dweller"),ordnet.dk s.v. ""
Other synonyms are Norwegian ("good farmer"),Hellquist, Elof (1922) Svensk etymologisk ordbok s.v. "", p. 988. Danish ("good lad"). Also Danish ("farm buck") and ("housebuck") where buck could mean billygoat or ram.
Regionally in Uppland Sweden is ("yard-spirit"), which being a rå often takes on a female form, which might relate to Western Norwegian (gardvord).
In the confines of Klepsland in Evje og Hornnes Municipality in Setesdal, Norway, they spoke of ("barn gnome").
Near synonyms
Some commentators have equated or closely connected the tomte/nisse to the (< "mound dweller"). However there is caution expressed by linguist Oddrun Grønvik against completely equating the tomte/nissse with the mound dwellers of lore, called the or (from the Old Norse 'mound'), although the latter has become indistinguishable with , as evident from the form .
The haugbonde is said to be the ghost of the first inhabitant of the farmstead, he who cleared the (house lot), who subsequently becomes its guardian. This haugbonde has also connected with the Danish/Norwegian (modern spelling: , "farm tree") or in Swedish ("ward tree") cult (Cf. ).
Another near synonym is the , where dukke denotes a "dragger" or "drawer, puller" (of luck or goods delivered to the beneficiary human), which is distinguishable from a nisse since it is considered not to haunt a specific household.
Origin theories
The story of propitiating a household deity for boons in Iceland occurs in the "Story of Þorvaldr Koðránsson the Far-Travelled" () and the Kristni saga where the 10th century figure attended to his father Koðrán giving up worship of the heathen idol (called or 'year-man' in the saga: or 'prophet' in the Þáttr) embodied in stone; this has been suggested as a precursor to the nisse in the monograph study by Henning Frederik Feilberg, though there are different opinions on what label or category should be applied to this spirit (e.g., alternatively as Old Norse landvættr "land spirit").
Feilberg argued that in Christianized medieval Denmark the puge (cog. Old Norse , German puk cf. Nis Puk; English puck) was the common name for the ancient pagan deities, regarded as devils or fallen angels. Whereas Feilberg here only drew a vague parallel between puge and nisse as nocturnally active, this puge or puk in medieval writings may be counted as the oldest documentation of nisse, by another name, according to Henning Eichberg. But Claude Lecouteux handles puk or puge as distinct from niss[e].
Feilberg made the fine point of distinction that tomte actually meant a planned building site (where as tun was the plot with a house already built on it), so that the Swedish tomtegubbe, Norwegian tuftekall, , etc. originally denoted the ("earth wights"). The thrust of Feilberg's argument considering the origins of the nisse was a combination of a nature spirit and an ancestral ghost (of the pioneer who cleared the land) guarding the family or particular plot. "2. Nisseskikkelsens Udspring [Origins of the nisse figure]", pp. 10–15. The nature spirits―i.e., tomtevætte ("site wights"), ("howe/mound dwellers"), "underground wights" (), or dwarves, or vætte of the forests―originally freely moved around Nature, occasionally staying for short or long periods at people's homes, and these transitioned into house-wights () that took up permanent residence at homes. In one tale, the sprite is called nisse but is encountered but by a tree stump (not in the house like a bona fide nisse), and this is given as an example of the folk-belief at its transitional stage. But there is also the aspect of the ghost of the pioneer who first cleared the land, generally abiding in the woods or heaths he cleared, or seeking a place at the family hearth, eventually thought to outright dwelling in the home, taking interest in the welfare of the homestead, its crops, and the family members.
There are two 14th century Old Swedish attestations to the "the gods of the building site". In the "Själinna thröst" ("Comfort of the Soul"), a woman sets the table after her meal for the deities, and if the offering is consumed, she is certain her livestock will be taken care of. In the Revelations of Saint Birgitta (Birgittas uppenbarelser), it is recorded that the priests forbade their congregation from providing offerings to the or "tomte gods", apparently perceiving this to be competition to their entitlement to the tithe (, book VI, ch. 78). There is not enough here to precisely narrow down the nature of the deity, whether it was land spirit () or a household spirit ().
Several helper-demons were illustrated in the Swedish writer Olaus Magnus's 1555 work, including the center figure of a spiritual being laboring at a stable by night (cf. fig. right). It reprints the same stable-worker picture found on the map Carta Marina, B, k. The prose annotation to the map, Ain kurze Auslegung und Verklerung (1539) writes that these unnamed beings in the stables and mine-works were more prevalent in the pre-Christian period than the current time. The sector "B" of this map where the drawing occurs spanned Finnmark (under Norway) and West Lappland (under Sweden). While Olaus does not explicitly give the local vernacular (Scandinavian) names, the woodcuts probably represent the tomte or nisse according to modern commentators.
Later folklore says that a tomte is the soul of a slave during heathen times, placed in charge of the maintenance of the household's farmland and fields while the master was away on viking raids, and was duty-bound to continue until doomsday.
Appearance
The Norwegian nisse was no bigger than a child, dressed in gray, wearing a red, pointy hat ( pikkelhue; a is a soft brimless hat) according to Faye.; tr. and tr.
In Denmark also, nisser are often seen as long bearded, wearing gray and a red brimless cap (). But the nisse turned bearded is an alteration, and the traditional purist nisse is beardless as a child, according to the book by Axel Olrik and Hans Ellekilde.
The tomte, according to Afzelius's description, was about the size of a one year-old child, but with an elderly wizened face, wearing a little red cap on his head and a gray wadmal (coarse woolen) jacket, short breeches, and ordinary shoes such as a peasant would wear.
The tonttu of Finland was said to be one-eyed, and likewise in Swedish-speaking areas of Finland, hence the stock phrase "" (one-eyed like the tomten).
The Tomtes height is anywhere from to no taller than according to one Swedish-American source, whereas the tomte (pl. tomtarna) were just 1 aln tall (an aln or Swedish ell being just shy of 60 cm or 2 ft), according to one local Swedish tradition.
Shapeshifter The nisse may be held to have the ability to transform into animals such as the buck-goat. horse, or a goose.