The peculiar story about the Gävle Goat started in 1966, when the idea came up to design a giant version of the traditional Swedish Christmas straw goat: the objective was to attract customers to the shops and restaurants in the southern part of the city. On the first Sunday of Advent 1966, the huge goat was placed at Castle Square in Gävle: since then, on the first of December, the 13-metre-high, seven-metre-long and three-tonne trestle comes into place as a Christmas symbol. The Gävle Goat became world famous and made it to the ‘Guinness Book of Records’ for the first time in 1985. Each year, hundreds of thousands of fans from all around the world follow him via Livecam and social media (Twitter and Instagram).
This year (Xmas 2023), due to the extremely wet weather in late summer, the straw used to construct the goat contains a higher than usual amount of seed, and local jackdaws have discovered that it can be used as a food source: the goatkeepers decided not to take protective action against the birds on the grounds that they are a natural threat and not a human one, unfortunately the goat is looking quite ragged already, as you can see in the picture below or in the Livecam
Facts about the Gävlebokken
- 1 fully loaded truck from Mackmyra with straw is used up.
- 56 straw mats of 5 meters are tied.
- 600 meters of string is used.
- 12,000 knots are tied by hand.
- 1200 running meters of timber are needed.
- 2500 nails are nailed.
- 50 meters of fabric is attached.
- 1000 working hours required.
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