In the northern hemisphere, October 31st was the day for recognizing the coming of winter: at midnight, all the evil spirits and beings ran away to the depths of the earth, to escape the cold. During the hours leading up to midnight, much mischief was played on people to make up for the forthcoming cold months… Today, October 31st is the eve of ‘All Hallows Day’ or ‘All Saints Day’: let’s see what happens in Scandinavia and the Nordic countries.
Halloween (‘Hrekkjavaka‘ in Icelandic) may not be officially celebrated in Iceland, but it’s not just the young people that nowadays are fascinated by this American tradition: the older ones are starting to dress up as well, with Hallóvín (a word play literally meaning ‘Hello wine‘) parties being all the rage. Icelanders are making Halloween part of their culture, with kids that love dressing as scary figures, and the sweets that go along with it. Parents and the marketplace are listening to the kids, so now you can find pumpkins and scary decorations in most grocery stores come late October.
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The trend of celebrating Halloween began in Norway around twenty years ago, but it has only really taken off in the last five or ten years. Norwegian kids first learned about Halloween by reading Donald Duck & Co., the country’s most popular comic books, thanks to the ‘jack-o-lanterns’ carved by Donald’s nephews and their practice of Trick-or-Treat. Just like Christmas Trees, Halloween came to Norway via Sweden, where children had celebrated it since the mid 1990s. Before the late ‘90s, Halloween was virtually unknown in Norway, so much so that when the cartoon classic “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” was translated into Norwegian, the Great Pumpkin became the ‘Old Man of Olsok’! Halloween in Norway is a lot similar to Halloween in the States, even if Norwegian kids say “knask eller knep” or “digg eller deng” (both meaning roughly “trick or treat”) instead of saying “trick or treat”, when the door is answered. The traditional Norwegian children’s game ‘lommelykt i høstmørket’, a combination of hide-and-seek and treasure-hunt played with flashlights in the darkness of fall nights, has a lot in common with Halloween: just add costumes and goodies on the evening of All Saint’s Day and there you have it!
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Halloween is basically not celebrated much in the Faroe Islands. Instead, it is preferred to remember those ‘lost at sea’ in what was everyday life for Faroese fishermen for centuries, stuck on small wooden boats in raging
storms. Today the Faroese fleet is one of the world’s most advanced, and fishing is a lot safer than it was, but the number of lives lost proves that it was a very risky endeavor. The 1st of November, or ‘Alla halganna dagur‘ as we call it, is still set aside to remember the hundreds of Faroese lives that have been lost at sea through the ages. Recently, it became something of a ‘Halloween tradition’ to visit the tunnels north of Klaksvík, in which back in 2010 a routine recording turned into something far more frightening as screams could be heard throughout the tunnel despite the fact nobody else was there. Ghosts? Who knows? But the sounds are scary just the same: you can listen to them in this episode of ‘The Faroe Islands’ podcast.
Known as “Alla Helgons Dag”, in Sweden Halloween is celebrated from October 31 until November 6: it begins at schools’ autumn break and, as with many other holidays, it has an eve which is either celebrated or becomes a shortened working day. Halloween has been celebrated in Sweden since the 1990s, and it established rapidly because adults felt a need: by the time of Halloween, Sweden is shrouded in darkness, while long working weeks stretched away endlessly from the summer holiday, because there are no public holidays or extended weekends in the calendar until All Saints’ Day. Nevertheless, Halloween is mainly celebrated by children and teenagers: they go to fancy parties wearing costumes and holding light lanterns and walk through the streets to ‘scare’ the neighborhood. Many pubs and restaurants have Halloween parties and decorate their premises with scary items and pumpkins: its celebration has led to an upswing in pumpkins growing on the island of Öland in the southern Baltic Sea, home to the giant gourds.
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In Denmark, All Saints’ Day is celebrated on the first Sunday in November. On Halloween, children dress up as ghosts and go around ringing door bells as they do on ‘Shrovetide’, a children’s festival usually on Quinquagesima Sunday for which they dress up and go around with their tins trying to collect money by singing to those who open the door. On Halloween, when the door is opened, they say ‘trick or treat’ (in English), and if they are not given a cookie or money, they make trouble, just like on Shrovetide.
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In Finland, Halloween is not a tradition, and the kids don’t go door to door asking for goodies: it is more for young people and an excuse to throw a party and hang out with friends. Anyway, there is a time when the youngest members of Finnish households search the streets for candy: on Palm Sunday, kids dress as witches, take around decorated birch branches and use their undeniable charm to get sweets. What is actually celebrated at Halloween time is ‘All Saints Day’ on the first Saturday after the 30th of October: families go to the cemetery to visit and honor relatives by lighting candles which can make the view of the entire cemetery a spectacular and solemn sight. During the days before All Saints Day, the shops in Finland are full of candles, displayed on special shelves.
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Halloween is an American tradition that seems to have gained momentum in Greenland, and today the ‘trick or treat’ search for sweets by knocking at random doors is very successful among children. In contrast to this ‘normal’ Halloween, the ‘Greenlandic Halloween’, on January 6, is something quite different, a night when you most definitely do not want your kids out on the street. Traditions vary from place to place, and seem to be more extreme in the remote settlements, but like most Greenlandic ghost-related traditions, this is seriously scary: a common tradition is that a disguised person roams the streets carrying a bat, ready to hurt anyone they meet. Another tradition is that people you know visit you at home, completely disguised: the idea is that you should try to guess who it is, but they will not reveal themselves, as the intention is to completely freak you out. Stories of frightening ghost-like creatures (Qivitoq) go along with this tradition. Mitaartut (singular ‘mitaartoq’) are silent masked performers who visit families typically on Epiphany, January 6th. These mysterious characters knock on doors, enter homes, and communicate without words by using humorous gestures and movements that correspond to their disguises, instead. People often playfully tease and laugh at the funny things Mitaartut do, but these actors stay true to their characters, and at the end of their visit they are rewarded with treats such as cakes, candy, and cigarettes. The custom’s name ‘Mitaarneq’ translates to ‘cutting faces’ which refers to the practice of smearing soot on the face and distorting it with strings stretched from ear to ear when masks are not used. Participants also showcase a variety of imaginative costumes and masks, sometimes even mimicking famous artworks: the masks portray a mix of traditional scare spirits and contemporary themes, reflecting both cultural heritage and modern influences, for example Munch‘s painting ‘The Scream’. Mitaartut, the traditional masked custom in Greenland, and Halloween share some similarities but there are also significant differences: in summary, while both Halloween and the Greenlandic mitaartut customs involve costumes, masks, and visiting homes, they have distinct cultural, historical, and thematic differences; Halloween has a broader and more commercialized appeal, while the Greenlandic traditions have deeper cultural roots within the Inuit communities of Greenland.
