Reykjavík Grapevine - dec 2020, Qupperneq 26

The Father Of
Icelandic Christmas
Brian Pilkin!ton brin!s the Yule Lads to life
Words: Iona Rangeley-Wilson Photo: Art Bicnick
Books
Pick up Brian Pilkington’s Christmas
books at the Grapevine store at
shop.grapevine.is
When you ask a child in Iceland
what the Yule Lads look like, you
might expect them to show you an
old Icelandic book–something as
old and ancient as the tale of the
Yule Lads themselves. But while
the troublemaking brothers are
rooted in Icelandic history, the
Yule Lads have a much more re-
cent co-parent: a Brit from Liver-
pool named Brian Pilkington. It
is Brian’s illustrations that have
come to define the appearance of
these age-old characters. Trolls,
giants, elves, the Yule Lads and the
Yule Cat: though steeped in his-
tory, they have been renewed and
redefined by Brian’s books.
Brian first came to Iceland in
the 70s. Now, he spends his days in
his studio in Skerjafjör!ur, writ-
ing stories, painting landscapes
and creating wonderful folkloric
illustrations—and particularly
spectacular holiday images. Brian
has written countless books about
Icelandic Christmas. Amongst his
best-known are ‘The 13 Yule Lads
of Iceland’ and ‘The Yule Cat–A
Seasonal Makeover’. Whilst the
earliest mention of the Yule Lads
can be traced back to the seven-
teenth century ‘Poem of Gr"la,’ the
pictures Icelandic children associ-
ate with these characters today are
entirely Brian’s invention.
A Christmas calling
Brian was first attracted to Ice-
landic Christmas stories as a kind
of artistic calling. “When I first
came to Iceland I was obviously
very aware of what was going on
at Christmas time and I realised
no one else was doing anything
with these characters anymore,”
he explains, sitting amongst his
piles of books and paintbrushes.
"So I figured somebody had to sit
down and start doing drawings
and write books about them. And
if no one else was doing it, then it
fell to me.”
The Yule Lads aren’t as friendly
as more international Christmas
characters like Santa Claus. Whilst
Santa leaves presents in childrens’
stockings, the Yule Lads harass
and steal: they peep through win-
dows, lick spoons, bowls and pots,
slam doors and steal skyr and sau-
sages. Their mother, Gr"la, likes
eating naughty children, whilst
the Yule Cat’s child-based tastes
fall on those who have not been
gifted any new clothes. The char-
acters are more comparable with
Dickens’s Scrooge than any jolly,
laughing Father Christmas. For
the same reason, Brian emphasis-
es, they’re also more interesting to
draw.
Appealingly imperfect
“They’re not quite as nice as Fa-
ther Christmas, but they’re not
hideously awful at the same time,”
explains Brian. “They’re more fun
to draw than a jolly Santa. Scowl-
ing expressions, tatty old clothes.”
Brian doesn’t like anything “too
sweet and saccharine” and finds
these Icelandic characters more
enjoyable precisely because they’re
imperfect and therefore realistic.
In fact, Brian sees his Yule Cat
illustration as a kind of self-por-
trait. “Because I’m grumpy and vi-
cious, too,” he jokes, “and he’s got
a beard and moustache and goatee
like mine. So we’re basically the
same persona.”
If you look closely at the front
cover of ‘The Yule Cat–A Seasonal
Makeover,’ you’ll see Brian’s re-
flection in the red bauble hang-
ing from the Yule Cat’s neck: be-
spectacled, holding a paintbrush,
glinting in line with the Yule Cat’s
disgruntled frown. There’s some-
thing oddly relatable about the
mischievous nature of Iceland’s
Christmas characters, then. It’s
not a tradition that aspires to per-
fect sweetness: the wry darkness
is appealing.
Nostalgia & reinvention
Of course, writing for children is
an inherently nostalgic act that
fits well with the nostalgia of folk-
lore—that’s another reason why
these “ready-formed characters”
are so charming to someone like
Brian. He turns back to childhood
and to old, traditional children’s
stories simultaneously. Then he
readjusts and reinvents them:
making the Yule Lads and the Yule
Cat new was an excavation as well
as an invention. Jóhannes úr Köt-
lum’s 1932 poetry book ‘Jólin Koma’
established the thirteen canoni-
cal Yule Lads as we know them to-
day, but they had lain untouched
since then. Jóhannes’s book had
tiny, black and white illustra-
tions—lovely in their own right,
but nothing close to the colour and
liveliness of Brian’s pictures.
“There was a big element of
having to create these people for
the first time,” says Brian, and he
made sure he perfected them. “I
applied myself to doing loads and
loads of drawings of cats to find
one I was comfortable with. I re-
assessed him and gave him more
colour, lightened him up and made
him more of a tabby cat.”
Brain Pilkington projected
these characters back into the pub-
lic eye, turning the pencil sketches
of ancient poems in the lively, co-
lourful, characterful illustrations
that Icelandic children know and
love today.
26The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10— 2020Books
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ICELANDIC GASTROPUB
Brian and a drawing of a cat (le!)