The Tale of Gryla the Christmas Witch

By Lacey Williams

Before silver bells and twinkling lights, there was a different kind of Christmas tradition. In the deep snow drifts and harsh winters in the mountains of Iceland, Gryla the Christmas Witch was born. As the personification of winter and darkness taking over the land, Gryla’s story began out of survival and was shaped by scarcity. Long before Santa came to reward good children, Gryla came to punish them.

In the early weeks of winter, when daylight barely strangles the darkness from the morning, Gryla stirs. Gryla, originally meaning “Growler”, was said to be a troll giantess with 300 heads that each had 6 eyes, 2 of which were wild and ghostly blue in the back of each neck. She had goat horns, shoulder length ears, hair on her foreheads and beards on her chins, and charred black teeth. Her grotesquerie was polished off by horse hooves and 15 tails that had 100 skin sacks on them, each large enough to carry 20 children.

The sight of Gryla alone is enough to haunt the nightmares of Icelandic children all winter long. But it’s her cannibalistic tendencies that kept them awake and clinging to their parents by the fireside. Because Gryla survives the winters on the sustenance she gains by eating naughty children.

She also does not stalk the icy nights alone. Gryla has an entire family of frights supporting her. She has her third husband, Leppalúd the scarecrow, who follows the second of which she killed, and the first which she ate. She has 20 children from before Leppalúd, and they share 13 more together. Those 13 are known as the infamous Yule Lads or the Christmas Men. Their motley crew is completed by their gnarly house pet known across the world as the Yule Cat.

The timelines for these characters are vague, but ancient. The earliest record of Gryla was recorded in Icelandic texts from the 13^th century, though it is widely believed her lore was shared orally long before that. While her children and cat had their own lore apart from hers, sometime during the early 19^th century, Gryla’s story was intertwined with theirs, as well as with the Christmas holiday.

In their shared story, the Yule Lads each visit the villages on their own respective nights wreaking havoc on the villagers in ways such as slamming doors throughout the night, eating any leftover food, or staring into any open doors or windows. Then they each bring back naughty children they encounter to Gryla.

The giant man-eating Yule Cat roams the villages and eats anyone not wearing new clothes.  This meant that new socks and underwear were imperative for the beginning of the winter season.

As folktales often do, some of their stories mutated and changed over the years. Gryla went from a lone winter troll to the matriarch of a gang of holiday ghouls. “Jol”, the old Germanic word for Yule, evolved to modern Christmas. It was a time to bring together the living and the dead relatives, and things like elves, trolls, and other monsters were believed to come into their world and visit the villages. It’s no surprise that the queen of trolls over the same season was roped into the holiday.

The Yule Lads went from a ragged bunch in dark wool clothes playing tricks and toting off children, to a more pot-bellied stature, with neat beards, and wore red and white fur trimmed clothes that left gifts behind on their visits. They became suspiciously elf-like along with the rise in popularity of Santa Claus in the 20^th century. One folk song even began to circulate that said Gryla had died to push a more family-friendly narrative of the time.

While Gryla has been celebrated in the mountains of Iceland throughout history, and still is today, the rest of the world is also getting to know her in recent years. Thanks to Gryla making appearances in movies like “Red One’ in 2024, tv shows like “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” on Netflix in 2018, and video games like God of War: Ragnarök of 2022, her infamy is spreading across the globe.

The story of Gryla the Christmas Witch is entrenched in the history and shared experiences in Iceland. Her story, with that of the Lads and Cat, are cautionary echoes of Krampus, and a stark contrast to the jolly story of Santa. Gryla’s story was meant to provoke fear in children to stay inside where the fires were warm and walls were safe.

The Yule cat was meant to incentivize finishing the autumn wool processing, so everyone had warm clothes to survive the unforgiving cold of the winter. The Yule Lads encouraged children to eat their food so as not to have leftovers for the Lads to steal, as a way to make sure they stayed nourished during the season of food scarcity. It also encouraged them to do their chores and secure the home at night.

Folklore hides a kernel of truth inside the shadow of imagination to create a tangible way to understand our world. With the combination of their nightmarish appearances, their terrifying actions, the relentless winter weather and all that came with it, and the animal sounds echoing down from the snow-covered mountains, it is no wonder villagers of all ages have clung to the lore of Gryla and her brood all these years.

So, this Christmas, as the fireside stories fade, listen closely. If you hear sleigh bells, it’s Santa coming to leave you a gift. But if you hear the wind howl through the snow-covered fields, that’s Gryla calling her sons home. Who’s visiting you this year: Santa or Gryla?