Nordic Noir

In a Norwegian folktale, a bridegroom has promised his closest friend a place at his wedding. There is one complication: his friend is dead.

In a legend published in 1844, a priest is travelling with four sturdy men when they reach Sundfossen in Gjerrestad, southern Norway.

At Smáralind shopping centre in Kópavogur, children were invited to arrive in costume on February 18, 2026, and sing to shop staff for candy.

In the 1940s, children gathered in the courtyard of a workers’ housing association in Vejle, Denmark, for Fastelavn barrel striking.

“Köyriä vai uunia?” — “Kekri or the stove?” That was the question visitors might put to a farm household in the Kuopio countryside when the autumn festival came around. According to a local recollection collected in 1936, they expected food or drink and threatened a broken stove if their hosts refused.

In the late nineteenth century, when candles began appearing on graves in some Swedish towns, they were more likely to be lit at Christmas than in November. Some of the recorded examples were at children’s graves.

In the medieval Icelandic Ynglinga saga, King Vanlandi has been asleep only a short time when he cries out that a mara is treading on him.

On November 1, 1992, the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported on costumed children carving pumpkins at a restaurant in Hellerup, outside Copenhagen.