Sweden claims to have Santa all wrapped up
‘Claus wars’ heat up among Nordic neighbours as they fight for slice of lucrative Father Christmas market
EVERY year, more than half a million people fly from all over the world to Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland to visit Father Christmas in his “official hometown”. There they can meet him at the Santa Claus Office, take rides on reindeer sleighs and post letters from Santa Claus’s Main Post Office.
But are they going to the right place? “The origin of Santa Claus is here in
Sweden, not in Finland,” asserts Christophe Risenius, the Frenchman pushing a bold plan to win a slice of the vast £350 million Lapland Christmas market for the Swedish side.
Starting with a pilot project this December, Mr Risenius and his team plan to bring Christmas to Björkliden, a village of ski cabins nestled on a mountain slope in the far north-western tip of Swedish Lapland. “We think we have the perfect spot to have a Santa Claus experience that is genuine, in the sense that it is matching the fantasy all the children of the world have of Christmas,” he says. “We want to do the real Christmas, not like in Rovaniemi, where it’s more of a mass product.”
Families who visit will be taken by
Power duo
reindeer sleigh down a winding mountain track to a century-old timber chalet where they will find Santa Claus waiting for them next to a roaring wood fire.
There will be hot chocolate and mulled wine, Christmas stockings, and a room where children can enjoy julpyssel, Sweden’s Christmas craftmaking tradition.
Outside there will be a permanent toboggan slope, an ice-skating rink, and rides on husky sleds.
Mr Risenius moved to Sweden’s far north two years ago – recently joining Björkliden’s owner, Lapland Resorts – and says he found it remarkable that in more than 30 years, no one had ever attempted to challenge Rovaniemi’s claim to be the “Official Hometown of Santa Claus in Lapland”.
“Have you been to Rovaniemi?” he asks incredulously. “It’s a city, and then you have this Santa Claus park. It’s like Disney.” Rovaniemi already has two Santa-themed amusement parks, which may soon be joined by a third.
Björkliden, by contrast, sits alone on a mountain slope deep inside the Arctic Circle, 100km from the nearest city, and has so many reindeer that you have to be careful not to run them over. Perhaps most importantly, it has reliable snow from late October to the end of March. Rovaniemi last year had to launch its Christmas season without even a dusting of the white stuff.
Mr Risenius suspects part of the reason for the Swedes’ reluctance to exploit Christmas is that it is one of the few countries in the world never to have fully accepted the American Santa Claus.
Jultomten, the Swedish version, is a less jolly figure, many of whose faintly menacing characteristics come from the house gnome you traditionally needed to placate with bowls of porridge.
His claim that Father Christmas comes from Swedish Lapland is based on the fact that “historically speaking, Lapland was only one area”, controlled in its entirety by Sweden from the Middle Ages right up until 1809. Finland’s claim stems from a 1927 report from Finnish broadcaster Marcus Rautio that Santa’s workshop had been found in Korvatunturi on the Russian border.
The real Santa, of course, did not come from the frozen north at all, but from near sun-baked Antalya in Turkey. St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, reputedly snuck into the house of a poor but devout man and secretly left him three bags of gold as dowries for his daughters, winning him his reputation for secret gift-giving.
The earliest reference to him living in the North Pole appears to have come as recently as 1866, in a series of cartoons in Harper’s Weekly.
But for now – with its 80 four-bed chalets, three luxury lodges, and fewer than 40 hotel rooms – Björkliden can hope to poach only a slither of Rovaniemi’s vast market.