The Yule Cat, Grýla and Iceland's 13 Yule Lads

The Yule Cat (Jólakötturinn) is a monstrous cat from Icelandic folklore that comes for anyone who does not receive a new piece of clothing before Christmas. Modern Icelandic tradition groups it with the ogress Grýla and her thirteen sons, the Yule Lads, who visit Icelandic homes one by one on the thirteen nights before Christmas, although the older records treat the cat as a figure of its own.

None of it is Viking Age. That is the first thing to say, because the internet says otherwise every December. The Yule Cat is first recorded in the nineteenth century, the Yule Lads are first named in the seventeenth century and only acquire their familiar thirteen names in 1862, and Grýla begins life in medieval Iceland as an ordinary troll with no link to midwinter at all. Below is what the Icelandic sources preserve, and where the popular version starts inventing.

Who Is the Yule Cat?

Jólakötturinn, the Yule Cat, is a huge cat that prowls the Icelandic countryside at Christmas and goes after anyone who has not been given new clothes. Icelanders said such a person would "go into the Yule Cat" (að fara í jólaköttinn), which the older accounts gloss variously as the cat taking the person, eating their Christmas food, or doing them some other harm. The version in which it simply eats you is the modern, hardened one. Either way it is one rule, one punishment. The cat does not check whether you were good. It checks whether you got a shirt.

The custom behind the threat is practical. Iceland ran on wool. Autumn was the season for processing the year's fleece, and finishing that work before Christmas mattered to every household. A child or a farmhand who had worked properly received a new garment; whoever had idled got nothing, and then had the cat to worry about. The story is a piece of labor discipline dressed as a monster. That is the standard reading rather than a statement any source makes, and the underlying belief is wider than Iceland: not getting new clothes at Christmas was reckoned unlucky across northern Europe long before the cat is first recorded.

The Yule Cat enters the written record late. Nineteenth-century Icelandic folklore collections mention it, and the version everyone knows today comes from the poet Jóhannes úr Kötlum, whose 1932 collection Jólin koma ("Christmas Is Coming") gave the cat and the Yule Lads the shape Icelanders know today. There is no medieval Icelandic text about a Christmas cat, and no Norse myth behind it.

Grýla: The Ogress Who Came First

Grýla is older than both the cat and the Lads, and her early career has nothing to do with Christmas. Her name appears in thirteenth-century Icelandic writing, including the Sturlunga saga compilation and the lists of troll-names preserved with Snorri Sturluson's Edda. In those texts she is simply a troll woman on a list of troll women, and in the Sturlunga verse a creature with fifteen tails. Nothing there ties her to children, to discipline or to any season.

The Grýla of later folklore is more developed. She lives in a cave with her third husband, Leppalúði, having disposed of the first two. She comes down from the mountains at Christmas to collect badly behaved children in a sack and boil them into stew. The thirteen Yule Lads are her sons. The Yule Cat is usually called hers today, but the older sources do not connect the two; even in Jóhannes úr Kötlum's 1932 book the cat gets its own poem, apart from Grýla and her household. That household version is documented from the seventeenth century onward, which is when Grýla and the Yule season are first firmly connected.

The Thirteen Yule Lads, One Night at a Time

The jólasveinar, the Yule Lads, arrive from the mountains one per night, starting thirteen nights before Christmas on December 12 and ending on Christmas Eve. Then they leave in the same order, the last one departing on January 6, the thirteenth day of Christmas. Most are named for a specific piece of petty household theft; a few, like the door-slammer and the window-peeper, for plain nuisance.

• Stekkjarstaur (Sheep-Cote Clod), December 12, who harasses the ewes on his stiff peg legs
• Giljagaur (Gully Gawk), December 13, who hides in gullies waiting to steal milk foam
• Stúfur (Stubby), December 14, unusually short, who steals pans to eat the crust
• Þvörusleikir (Spoon-Licker), December 15, thin as a rake, who licks the wooden stirring spoon
• Pottaskefill (Pot-Scraper), December 16, who takes the leftovers from the pot
• Askasleikir (Bowl-Licker), December 17, who hides under the bed and grabs the wooden food bowl
• Hurðaskellir (Door-Slammer), December 18, who slams doors at night to wake the house
• Skyrgámur (Skyr-Gobbler), December 19, who empties the tub of skyr
• Bjúgnakrækir (Sausage-Swiper), December 20, who takes sausages from the rafters
• Gluggagægir (Window-Peeper), December 21, who looks through windows for something to take
• Gáttaþefur (Doorway-Sniffer), December 22, with an enormous nose for finding baking
• Ketkrókur (Meat-Hook), December 23, who fishes smoked lamb down with a hook
• Kertasníkir (Candle-Beggar), December 24, who begs for tallow candles, once edible and worth stealing

The list is not ancient and it was never fixed. Older Icelandic sources give different numbers and different names, and their Lads were genuinely menacing as well as thieving, close enough to their ogress mother to work as a threat. The number thirteen turns up in an eighteenth-century Grýla poem, and these thirteen names were printed by Jón Árnason in Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri in 1862, from a list sent to him by the Reverend Páll Jónsson. Jóhannes úr Kötlum's 1932 poem did not invent them. It fixed them in place, and the radio and the National Museum finished the job.

One detail shows how seriously Icelanders once took these figures. A royal decree on household discipline issued for Iceland in 1746, Christian VI's Húsagatilskipun, forbade frightening children with "the so-called Yule Lad or ghosts". Grýla is not named in it. When a government legislates against a bedtime story, the story was doing its job.

The Shoe in the Window

Modern Icelandic children put a shoe on the windowsill during the thirteen nights. A child who behaved finds a small gift left by that night's Lad. A child who did not gets a raw potato. The shoe goes out on the evening of December 11, so the first gift is there on the morning of the 12th. The custom is recent: there are Icelandic examples from before 1930, brought home by seamen who had seen it in North Atlantic ports, but it did not become general until around 1960.

What Is Norse Here, and What Is Not

Grýla's name is genuinely medieval, and Icelandic still uses grýla as an ordinary noun for a bogey or a manufactured scare. Which came first is unsettled: Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon's etymological dictionary suggests the name may itself have meant something like "the terrible one". Everything else in this household, the cat, the thirteen brothers, the calendar, the shoe in the window, belongs to early modern and modern Iceland, not to the Viking Age.

That does not make it less interesting. It makes it a rare thing: a living folk tradition with a documented history, still practiced and still changing. The Vikings kept their own midwinter feast, and what the sagas say about it is a separate story, told in our guide to how the Vikings celebrated Yule.

Keep exploring: plan a midwinter feast of your own with our guide to how to celebrate Yule, meet the wolves, serpents and trolls of the myths in Norse mythology creatures, or find a midwinter gift in our Norse jewelry.

Yule Cat and Yule Lads FAQ

What is the Yule Cat?

Jólakötturinn is a giant cat from Icelandic folklore that comes for anyone who receives no new clothing before Christmas. Modern tradition places it with the ogress Grýla, whose thirteen sons are the Yule Lads, though the older sources do not connect them. It is usually explained as an incentive to finish the autumn wool work.

Is the Yule Cat a Viking tradition?

No. The Yule Cat is first recorded in nineteenth-century Icelandic folklore, printed by Jón Árnason in 1862, and reached its familiar form in Jóhannes úr Kötlum's poem of 1932. No Norse myth or saga mentions it.

Who are the 13 Yule Lads?

They are Grýla's sons, who come down from the mountains one per night from December 12 to Christmas Eve, each named for a household theft or nuisance: Sheep-Cote Clod, Gully Gawk, Stubby, Spoon-Licker, Pot-Scraper, Bowl-Licker, Door-Slammer, Skyr-Gobbler, Sausage-Swiper, Window-Peeper, Doorway-Sniffer, Meat-Hook and Candle-Beggar.

Who is Grýla in Icelandic folklore?

Grýla is a mountain ogress who takes badly behaved children in a sack and boils them. Her name appears in thirteenth-century Icelandic texts as a troll name with no Christmas connection; her role as mother of the Yule Lads is documented from the seventeenth century.

Why do Icelandic children put a shoe in the window?

During the thirteen nights before Christmas, each Yule Lad leaves a small gift in the shoe of a child who behaved, and a raw potato for one who did not. The shoe goes out on the evening of December 11. The custom reached Iceland through seamen before 1930 and only became general around 1960.

What happens if you do not get new clothes for Christmas in Iceland?

By the folk rule, the Yule Cat gets you. Clothing is still a common Icelandic Christmas present, and the phrase að fara í jólaköttinn, "to go into the Yule Cat", survives for anyone left without something new to wear.