According to Norwegian tradition, an elderly man with a long beard hangs out in local barns on Christmas Eve and wants to eat porridge (called grøt). Norwegians living on farms knew to put a bowl of porridge out in the barn, to keep the nisse happy.
In more modern times, the bearded man, called "julenisse," sometimes makes an appearance in Norwegian homes, and if he does, he brings gifts.
There have been classic songs written about the nisse, and nisse figurines are found in a wide variety of shapes and styles, used as decoration in the home.
But the classic fjøsnisse, the one that eats porridge in the barn, seems to be dying out in the minds of Norwegian children. Television, globalization and mass-marketing are replacing him with the American Santa Claus.
"The American nisse is here to stay," ethnologist Ann Helen Bolstad Sjelbred recently reported. Lots of children growing up in Norway today, she said, barely know who the barn nisse is, and expect the new nisse to bring them presents.
Meanwhile, the Norwegian towns of Drøbak, Røros, Longyearbyen and Egersund have each been claiming the Norwegian nisse as their own. Local politicians in Drøbak, south of Oslo, even passed a resolution declaring that their town is his official home.
It was in Drøbak, after all, that one of the first all-year "Christmas Houses" was founded, and the town even had an agreement with postal authorities to handle all letters addressed to either julenisse or Santa Claus.
Listeners calling in their own choice to Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) didn't agree, and Egersund, on Norway's southwest coast, won the honors.
