We need gnoms!

The ancient Nisse who at some point was associated with Jul and gifts… Not Santa Claus. The thick, round, laughing figure with elves as helpers, at shopping malls in December. No, I'm talking about the little, thin guy, with pointed ears and evil grin. The bad-tempered, implacable, invisible, who can take make all sorts of mischief, and who sees everything we do.

If you kick the cat, or lose your temper and give one of the kids a slap, when you think no one is watching ... the nisse sees it! If anyone should be so lazy that they cannot be bothered take good care of their animals, even if everybody still only think well of them, the nisse knows the truth. Everything you do to someone who is weaker than you, the nisse saw it and the nisse never forgives.

He keeps an eye on the children, too, of course. If one of the kids is bothering the cat, destroying birds nests, scaring the horses ... the nisse sees it. If a child tries to climb up to reach the cookie jar on the top shelf in the kitchen, it may well be that the nisse gives a hand supporting the chair. But if big brother steals a cake from his little brother, the nisses eyes turn black. We may even remember from childhood, if we decided it would be fun to put soap on the wheelbarrow handles, we might hear the nisse giggling and laughing. But if we teased the rooster chicks to make them to fight, then we suddenly felt his eyes burning in our neck, and that was not pleasant.

If we made the nisse angry, there is no end to the mischief he can do, the obstacles that he can place in our path. Everything we try will fail, and no matter how hard we try it is impossible to succeed. Basically, we know why the fence turned out skewed, and the cabinet door will never close properly. We can try on again, time after time, but skewed it will be. And to buy a lottery ticket would certainly be a waste of money. Nissen is an ill-tempered, unforgiving little guy, it is not easy to get on his right side again. All falsehood is easily seen through. He sits there on your shoulder and taunts you, laughingly: "Yes, now you would try to be kind, so genuinely selfless ..." To escape is of course useless, the nisse always manages to hide in the moving boxes. So it's probably best to be careful not to get on the wrong side in the first place!

Previously, it might be that parents used the nisse to scare their children to much, and made them neurotic. Adults can also be completely paralyzed if they always see themselves through the nisses most judgmental gaze, Selma Lagerlöf have some excellent descriptions of this. So, this respect for the nisse, as it is with most other things: Everything in moderation.

Nowadays it might be that we could have benefited from a bit more presence in our lives, of the stabbursnisse, the goblin that lives in our barns and storehouses!