The Captain’s Log entry: Weeks of December 11 - 19, the year of our Lord 2023 🎅🏼🌲🐾🥔
Behind the scenes for our fourth episode on Jólakötturinn, the Christmas or Yule Cat of Iceland!
Happy holidays to all who celebrate the WINTER SOLSTICE and its associated seasonal festivities inclusive of:
Yule!
Christmas!
Chanukah!
Kwanzaa!
As we shared in our latest episode, How the Cat Stole Christmas: Introducing The Yule Cat of Iceland, the winter solstice which is usually on December 21st, is the shortest day of the year and, correspondingly, the longest night. We’ll get into that after the jump but first!
Wow, thank you so much to Ear Worthy (sign up for Frank Racioppi’s excellent articles now!) for naming us among these amazing indie podcasts in your 2023 Top 10 - this really was an honor!!
Big thanks to new podfriend Joey Held of Fun Fact Friyay! (his newsletter is purr-fect for all trivia lovers who want to be ready to win Cash Cab!) for shouting us out on his Good People, Cool Things podcast - did you check out his trailer?
And YOU. Thank you! Somehow, our little indie podcast that could has reached thousands of ears and we’re at nearly 5,000 downloads* this year. YOU helped share the podcast with your friends, colleagues, listeners, and strangers on the street. And next year, we’ll have a little treat to send to you, if you want, as thanks! Stay TUNED (via this Substack!)
* = No, digital marketers. The word doesn’t really mean what you think it does. We have no really clear idea what that really means. Is it a stream? Is it a listen? Does it literally mean someone clicked that button on their player to actually download the episode itself? Nobody seems to know this in the industry, definitively, but it’s a nice mark to meet for a small outfit like ours!)
AT OUR LAST PORT OF DISEMBARKATION
In which the editorial director of this newsletter, Captain Kitty reports on our past destinations.
In our most recent episode, which was released last week, we continued the discussion that we started in Season 1 in our Vikings episode (listen here if you’ve yet to!) with returning Norse folklore expert and historian DR. TERRY GUNNELL of the University of Iceland. Dr. Gunnell had previously hinted at the associations among women, winter and darkness and we sort of picked up this theme when we investigated the unique Christmas character of Iceland: Jólakötturinn.
As first addressed in our Witches and Whisky episode earlier this season, here again we have a story of a seemingly un-feminine woman and her cat. We’re talking about the old woman of the mountains, Grýla, and her monstrous cat, Jólakötturinn.
Jólakötturinn (pronounced Yola-CAHT-tur-in, to my non-native Icelander ears) means Yule cat. This giant scary fella is unique to Iceland. He poses the most threat to children around Christmas time - there’s a very specific way to make sure he doesn’t come that we imagine surprised you as much as us when we learned about him the first time!
This Christmas cat may be Iceland’s folklore analog to their fellow Norse folk Sweden’s winter goat. How? Well, language is a living thing - through etymology, we can sometimes observe the various cultural exchanges and the evolution of a community or civilization across time. Dr. Gunnell’s theory of how the Swedish Yule goat became a cat in Iceland is one such example that he broke down for us in the epiosde. This is a beautiful illustration of what Dr. Ali Olomi explained is so critical to remember about cultural exchange and influence in our episode on The Golden Age of Islam: it’s not about where it came from, so much as who was in discussion with whom. So in the case of “where did the Yule cat come from?”, we have the Vikings (of the Norse ethnic groups) in, well, sort of a forced discussion with the enslaved people they brought over on their ships of Scottish and Irish ancestry.
(Sidebar: Yes, it’s CAPRICORN SEASON and goats are part of the associated symbol, etc. and of course we will further explore the cat-goat connection in a later season!)
Slaves? Whew.
The history Dr. Gunnell shared also corrected our misunderstandings about the prior inhabitants of Iceland - which turned out to be…very few people, mostly Irish hermits who obviously didn’t come there to breed and colonize - at least per the record and archaeological evidence.
“But Captain”, you might interject, “What about the fact that some native Icelanders look…like Inuit folks?”
Well, easy peasy. That’s not a fact.
“But…Björk? Looks…Asian?”
Ah, she doesn’t to me, but whatever.
As it turns out, the epicanthic eyelid folds and darker hair and eyes of those we see as Asiatic indigenous people are traits shared by all those whose ancestors lived in snowy, cold areas. So, while it’s kind of rude to speculate on another person’s ethnic background, we’ll go out on a limb and state that it’s unlikely that Iceland’s most famous daughter, Björk Guðmundsdóttir has Arctic indigenous ancestry of that type - unless it’s of the lighter haired Sami people of Finland - who finally received some reparations from the Norwegian government for theft of land, sheesh!). For the record, we’re a tad sheepish to be writing this out as someone’s ancestry is honestly, none of our business - eep - so please excuse us, Ms. Guðmundsdóttir! Being a public figure comes with some not fun stuff. Welp.
ANYWAY. Back to Grýla, a public figure but also, fictional (feel better, kids?!).
So the mother of this monster cat was pretty, well, witchy - according to native Icelander journalist HAUKUR S MAGNÚSSON, kids are raised to fear this ogress because she is known to come down from the mountains, steal away naughty children from the village below into her large knapsack, and then eat them! It seems that this motif of an austere moral authority embodied by an old woman in the wilds is connected to much older traditions in Norse folklore (and others) featuring the crone - a fierce, wise old woman of nature who teaches humans what rules to abide by in order to survive the wilds. Sound familiar? What other Grýla-like characters in fairy tales or mythologies can you think of? Name them in the comments below!
We can’t help but think about an earlier fierce woman with cats - Freya! Who fellow Icelander, musician JÚLÍA HERMANNSDÓTTIR of the excellent band Oyama (Topshelf Records) name-checked when describing modern Iceland’s capital city Reykjavík’s cat-abundant street, Freyjugata (Freya’s Street). We talked about Freya and her gib cats in our Vikings episode. Freya, who you may recall has an association with magic, is sensed on this special street where cats seem to magically appear, per Júlía. Folks - I don’t know about you, but I think anywhere a cat comes around is pretty magical - I mean, they seen to transform their spaces don’t they? The second a cat comes around, depending on who you are, they cause squeals, sneezes and reveal the degree of evil that lives within each and every person who loudly and proudly declares their hatred of cats which is a great way to thin out your Christmas card list. (Just kidding / kinda not, I mean how rude to hate one someone’s beloved but I digress…)
Where was I? Ah yes. Cats.
It’s heartwarming to see this softer legacy of the Vikings and their influence on Norse folklore translated to the kindness towards these fur residents during a very cosmically special time of the year. And so, dear listeners / readers - despite his fierceness, Jólakötturinn inspires the cute, cat-themed holiday decorations around Yule in Iceland we’ve seen featured in photos. So there you have it - the Christmas Cat of Iceland! We hope we can visit sometime soon! For now, we’re inspired to include an article of clothing for all our loved ones (listen to find out why!) and make sure to heed the lessons of Grýla’s Yule Cat when it comes to looking out for each other.
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Well folks, 2023 has been quite the year! As noted in the last episode, the podcast team are taking a lil’ season break in observance for Captain Kitty’s birthday (the 12th day of Janus’ month, allegedly). But your editors on this here newsletter will be back next week with your biweekly dose of CAT NEWS LATELY, and in that edition we’ll also announce the date of episode 5 on the world wide web…of kitties!
Until then - we hope that you’ve been cozy, connected and cared for. We still see the folks in Gaza suffering terribly, as well as the Ukraine and conflicts in Sudan and the folks still held hostage from Israel.
So our new year’s wish is truly - peace on earth and goodwill to humankind.
Yours truly,
🐈 Captain Kitty, Binky and Snuggles 🐐
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