Gnomes 2: The Nisse
/Julia really wanted to title this episode 2 Gnomes 2 Furious, but SEO! We dig into the Scandinavian Nisse and Tomte, the socialist leanings of these house spirits, and just why everyone got so into garden gnomes all of a sudden!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of poverty, death, theft, animal death, Nazis, nationalism, guns, sexual content, and climate change.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And it's not really a new story from around the world this week, Amanda, because last week, we discussed the origins of those little guys that are often spotted in our gardens, gnomes.
AMANDA: That's right. And we ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, seeing how Scandinavia gets in the mix. How does Norway get in on this flavor? [0:55]
JULIA: That's a great question, Amanda, because I did give you a lot of information about sort of the Greek origins of the gnome, from the Iliad to the alchemy of the true Renaissance man, Paracelsus. But now, we're going to talk about the fact that that's not the only inspiration for gnomes when it comes to those little, red-hatted gnomes that we see. So today, I bring you Gnomes 2, 2 Gnomes, 2 Furious.
AMANDA: Thank goodness, Julia. It was like holding in a sneeze, preventing myself from making that reference. I am so glad that you got there for me and the audience.
JULIA: Yes. If we do a third gnome episode, it'll be Gnomes 3: Tokyo Drift.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: So this episode is going to focus on, like I said, the other inspiration for gnomes, which is the Scandinavian Nisse. Now, this is the name that is most typically used in Norway. In Sweden, they are referred to as the Tomte. But regardless of what you were calling them, Amanda, they are one of our favorite things here on the podcast. They're a house spirit.
AMANDA: Hey, there's nothing like the spirits that live at home with you, who you have to live side by side with, who can maybe help you, but definitely can harm you if you piss them off.
JULIA: That is true. And we'll see a little bit about that in the near future as we discuss these. But particularly, these are solitary, sometimes mischievous house spirits who are tasked with the protection and welfare of farmsteads as well as the buildings that sit upon them.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: If you take the Swedish name, the Tomte, it literally translates to homestead man.
AMANDA: Really?
JULIA: Yeah, it's really cool. It's deriving from the word that just means homestead or just like lot, as in building lot. And then the Nisse has a lot less of a sort of on the nose name, I would say. It derives from the name Nils, which is the Scandinavian form for Nicholas, which might be relevant to us later. We'll see.
AMANDA: Okay. Because if all of the house spirits are just named like Jim, I would find that very funny. But I have a sense that there's a ruler or maybe a saint that is a Nicholas in here, that we're gonna get involved with.
JULIA: Yeah, it would be really funny if, like, you take, for example, a kobold, and you're like, "Yeah, all kobolds derive from the name Carl." And you're like, "Wait, hold on."
AMANDA: "Yeah, this is my house brownie, and obviously, like all brownies, his name is Jim Bob." I don't know why it's always Jim or Jim Bob, but here we are.
JULIA: You just love the name Jim. That's okay.
AMANDA: I guess.
JULIA: It's kind of a funny name because it is so common.
AMANDA: It is, and also there's a J and an I next to each other, and both of them have little dots, and my brain wants to combine it into one dot, just for like, efficiency, but that's not what we do.
JULIA: Hmm. That is a interesting look into how your brain works, Amanda.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Much like many house spirits, the Tomte and the Nisse are described as being small men. They're described as the size of a child, but they resemble an older man, usually bearded. His clothes are often disheveled and raggedy in nondescript colors, like gray or navy, which allows his more signature look to stand out, which is the bright red cap that he wears on his head.
AMANDA: Now, Julia, why?
JULIA: Couldn't possibly say, Amanda. I think there is some ties and connections that anthropologists and folklorists have made to the Amanita mushroom in the region, and there is, like some association between gnomes and mushrooms, as we discussed in our mushroom month episodes. However, there's no, like, firm reason as to why he wears a red cap. We'll talk about some connections that people have made in the past to another character that wears a red cap, but we'll get there when we get there.
AMANDA: I did not anticipate a Santa Claus tie into the part two of our gnomes spectacular, but here we go.
JULIA: [chuckles]
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: So with this red hat, we are starting to see where we're kind of getting that signature appearance of the garden gnome, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And like many house spirits as well, they live in either the pantry, which we see house spirits often living in the kitchen in some regard, or in the barn in where they are responsible for taking care of the animals, particularly horses, but we often see them associated with cows and other livestock.
AMANDA: I really love the definition of home in the Scandinavian homesteads extends to the outbuildings, because it is so important, economically and practically, to make sure that the goat or sheep or cow or horse or whatever farm creatures that you share your land with are also okay. And if it were me, I would make sure that, like, yes, I want, you know, my kitchen to be free of pests. I want my, you know, flour to be free of weevils or whatever goes into flour. But mostly, I want to make sure my cow is okay, because that's my, like, economic unit that I cannot do without.
JULIA: Oh, Amanda, you are already so on the ball. You don't even know. I'm so excited.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: So in describing these spirits, they are very similar to the ones we've talked about in the past, like Scottish brownies and the Slavic Domovoi. And as you might remember with our other house spirits, they usually like to take care of the household. So a clean and orderly home or farm, for example, is an indication that a Tomte or a Nisse reside there and are being compensated for the work that they are doing.
AMANDA: I love it. It's like, "Okay, like, this is a nice house." As a kid, the nicer the house, the more fucked up I assumed the family is, which says more about me and my family of origin, I think, than the other people. But I do love this idea, that it's like, "What an orderly and lovely home. You all must get along really well with your Tomte."
JULIA: Yeah. And speaking of compensation for their work, they are very proud spirits. They are capable of doing a tremendous amount of work in the night when no one is around to see them do that work, as we often talk about with house spirits, right? However, they are very proud of what they do, and they don't tolerate with anyone interfering with their work.
AMANDA: Oh, so are you not supposed to sort of pre-clean for the cleaners?
JULIA: Yeah, sort of. Sort of that is the case, or like, if they have something that they consider their task, there are stories in which they will say, "Hey, don't touch that. I'm taking care of that. Okay?" Like, it's kind of like— have you ever been in a kitchen with someone when they're making a meal and they're like, "Nope, please go out. You're in the way, please."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "This is my domain. I'll take care of it." And they don't ask for much from humans that they work for. In fact, I think most people demand this of their jobs, even in this day and age, they might not necessarily get it, which is, they demand respect and trust from their employer.
AMANDA: Okay. I love this. I would imagine that if— I guess because I am used to thinking about this in a punitive way. I would assume that if I, as the human being in the home, fail to keep it to their standard, then they might mess up. But no, they're saying like, "This should be a well-functioning, well-humming machine, and if you get in everyone's way, that's going to mess things up. But if everyone just does what they're meant to do, we're all gonna be happy here."
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. And you want, for example, your employer to trust you that you are capable of your job, And that's all that they're asking for.
AMANDA: 100%. Workers' rights, say the Tomte.
JULIA: Exactly. And then also, much like many other jobs, they demand a Christmas bonus.
AMANDA: Hey, okay. I mean, yeah.
JULIA: In this case, they ask for a bowl of Christmas porridge with butter on it, served to them on Christmas Eve.
AMANDA: Okay. I mean—
JULIA: That's not too much to ask for, right?
AMANDA: No, they're part of the family. They should also eat.
JULIA: Exactly.
AMANDA: Or, excuse me, Julia, not part of the family. They're part of the workplace, and they deserve a special recognition at the end of the year.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. Even though like— especially during the time period that we're talking about, that these folk tales were particularly common, butter was definitely considered a luxury to an impoverished farmer, for example.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But if he wants to make sure that he doesn't stay impoverished or worse, he better be including that butter in that Christmas porridge.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Legend goes that if these simple needs are not met, they will get the fuck off of the farmstead. Any place that they are not respected, they will simply leave. And if they leave, it is known that that farm will begin to fail and that the farmer will be basically reduced to nothing.
AMANDA: Dang. That is high stakes.
JULIA: Now, this is such an inherent part of their folklore that there is specifically a tale in which a Nisse does not get his porridge.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: It is fittingly titled "When the Nisse got no butter on his Christmas porridge."
AMANDA: Honestly, Julia, that's me at a diner. If I order a breakfast combo and it comes with toast in a diner, and that toast has not been made into essentially a butter sandwich on the griddle, what the fuck are we doing here? Why am I in this diner in the first place?
JULIA: What have we been doing here?
AMANDA: Come on. Come on.
JULIA: So the story goes, one Christmas Eve, a servant girl, or in some cases, it's translated to milkmaid, decides that she is going to play a trick on the Nisse. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just the mischievous nature of youth. Maybe being a milkmaid is boring at times, so you have to liven it up. I don't know. Maybe she got a little tipsy at the Christmas celebrations. Who knows? Either way, she decides she's going to play a trick on the Nisse, and rather than topping the Christmas porridge with butter, she places the butter on the bottom before leaving it out for the Nisse.
AMANDA: Oh, no. But that's wasting butter and not fulfilling the goal.
JULIA: Well, so— I mean, it's still in the porridge, right?
AMANDA: It is, but if I were a Nisse and I looked at it and I didn't see that pat of butter on top, I'd be like, "Fuck, no, man."
JULIA: She didn't even choose to not include it or anything. It's just at the bottom.
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: It's not even that good of a prank.
AMANDA: No, it's not. Like, you scoop it in, like, "Oh, I guess no butter here." And then you eat it. You're like, "Butter, yum."
JULIA: Yeah. So she leaves out the bowl of porridge for the Nisse and a Nisse comes along, sees that there's no butter on top of that porridge. And again, they don't ask for much, Amanda. They just want a dollop of butter in their food for all the hard work they did for the past year.
AMANDA: Once a year.
JULIA: Once a year. Now, he sees that it doesn't have this luxurious melted butter on top, and the Nisse doesn't say anything. He just leaves. He goes to the barn where the livestock are kept, and he kills the farm's best cow.
AMANDA: Yep, that'll do it.
JULIA: They couldn't even give him a little butter. He said, "Fuck you, guys. Now, you're down a cow. Try making butter now, bitch."
AMANDA: Exactly. And I love this attitude. This is workers
rights, baby. You don't get what you want. You break the means of production and say, "Good luck now."
JULIA: There you go. There you go. So after he has given out what he considers the farmer's just desserts, he returns back to his bowl of porridge because [11:45] I guess. I don't know.
AMANDA: Sure. Yeah.
JULIA: He's still hungry at the end of the day.
AMANDA: Yeah. Uh-huh.
JULIA: When he gets to the bottom of the bowl, he finds that the butter was actually there.
AMANDA: Uh-huh.
JULIA: Instantly regrets his hasty decision to enact revenge, as one does.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And so he steals off into the night to the neighbor's farm, steals their best cow, and leads her back to the barn in order to replace the cow that he's killed.
AMANDA: Incredible. What did the neighbors do?
JULIA: Well, Amanda, that's where the story ends. There's no note about what the neighbor farmer does. Is he suffering? Has he lost his livelihood? Who can say and who knows? The Nisse does not care.
AMANDA: I wonder more what that farmer's Nisse are up to. Are they like, "What the F? Worker on worker violence here. Come on."?
JULIA: I'm very curious now if there's just a chain of, like, Nisse thefts that are happening—
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: —where, like, one steals one and then the other one discovers that the cow is gone, and so—
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: —they steal it from another farm. Or if it's just like back and forth with the same cow. Who can say, really?
AMANDA: I don't know. I mean, maybe eventually you steal from a shitty employer, or one from whom, like the Nisse fled, and then it's like, "Oh, well, that all works out."
JULIA: So in fact, Amanda, this stealing from their neighbors is such a common theme among the Nisse, which is, I guess, something to consider next time you decide whether or not you're gonna put a garden gnome in your yard.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But this theme is highlighted in another story, which is called The Nisse Who Stole Fodder.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: So this story is about an impoverished farmer who got to the point one winter where he couldn't even provide hay to feed his farm animals.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: He is sitting in his barn one day, lamenting his inability to take care of his livestock, when out of nowhere, he hears someone say, "I will help you."
AMANDA: Oh, do tell.
JULIA: He looks around. He's trying to find the source of the voice. Doesn't seem to be able to figure out where it comes from. So he decides, "Well, not gonna think about that too much. Must have imagined it."
AMANDA: I mean, I too, Julia, fantasize about somebody coming over and solving all my problems, so this is very relatable.
JULIA: So after that, he kind of just keeps going about his farming, kind of feeling like, "Well, I guess I'll just continue this for as long as I possibly can, even though I'm probably gonna starve by the end of winter." Not a great situation. He finds— after a few days, he begins to notice that suddenly his animals aren't looking so thin. In fact, it seems like they're thriving, even though he hasn't really been able to feed them at all.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, or in this case, a well-fed horse in the mouth.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: He doesn't really question it too much, but he does kind of start to feel guilty that he's not the one providing for his animals. He's like, "It's great that they're doing well, but I should be doing something about that, right?"
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah.
JULIA: So he decides, one day, during this really harsh winter, he is going to cross the ice to get to the neighboring village so he could potentially go buy some hay.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: As he is crossing the ice, a small man in tattered clothes and a red cap on his head stops him and is like, "Where are you going?" And he's like—
AMANDA: "What the hell? Am I not doing for you?"
JULIA: And then he's like, "Hi, I don't know you. I'm just going to go to the village and buy some hay." And the little man's like, "Nah, nah, nah. It's too dangerous out here on the ice. It's very cold out. Don't worry about it. I'm gonna help you return back to your farm." Now, the farmer, apparently a big fan of team ignorant, just sort of shrugs and goes, "Okay," and returns home.
AMANDA: Couldn't be me, but you know, ignorance is bliss, I guess.
JULIA: That night, the farmer looked out his window, and in the light of the full moon, he saw the little man leading one of his cows across the ice towards his neighbor's farm.
AMANDA: Oh, biz.
JULIA: Confused, because what the fuck is this going on?
AMANDA: Uh-huh.
JULIA: He decides to watch, and later he sees the same little man returning with the cow, with the cow now loaded up with hay.
AMANDA: Bummer. This is really serious business when all of us are here in the same environment trying to make it and needing to feed our animals, like, damn.
JULIA: Yeah. So the farmer then realizes that the man must have been a Nisse, and that he, every night, had been fetching hay for the animals from his neighbor's farm. Now, again, Amanda, the story really doesn't get into what that means for the poor neighbor farmer, whether he is suffering—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —so much that— just so that this other farmer can survive. But part of me wants to give the Nisse the benefit of doubt. Maybe he's only stealing from other farmers who have an excess, who have—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —more that they needed than to take care of their animals for the season. I'm really picturing socialism as the—
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: —driving factor for the Nisse.
AMANDA: I think this is hopefully a proper and equitable redistribution of hay from the Nisse's perspective.
JULIA: That's what I'm hoping. That's what I'm hoping. So these benevolent little thieves have become a lot more common now, as time has gone on. They've been featured in literary works. They have become Scandinavian symbols. But Amanda, I'll tell you a little bit more about the symbolism of the Nisse as soon as we grab our refill.
AMANDA: Let's go.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. Normally, I would start with our patrons, but first, I want to tell you, we have a new piece of merch in our merch store, and I am in love with it. It is a piece of merch that I think we teased a little bit, but they are incredibly cool corduroy hats that say "Old Wives' Tale Teller," and I am obsessed with it, black corduroy, white lettering, beautiful font. And I'm telling you right now, we have a limited stock. So go right now to spiritspodcast.com/merch and pick up this incredibly cool hat. And listen, a little secret for you, if we sell out of these quickly, we will make more. Maybe we'll even make them in different colors. Who can say? But you have to kind of vote with your dollars to let us know that we need to make more. So go to spiritspodcast.com/merch and pick up your Old Wives' Tale Teller corduroy hat. If you want to match me and Amanda for the rest of the summer, it's gonna be Old Wives' Tale Teller summer, so get on that right now, spiritspodcast.com/merch. Okay, now, we will get to our newest patron. Thank you so much, Ray Rayburn, for joining us at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Jane, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Scott, Wil and AE (Ah), as well as our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. And hey, if you want cool rewards, like ad-free episodes, or, I don't know, recipe cards for every single gosh darn episode, or maybe even bonus monthly urban legends episodes and our new recommendation newsletter that we send out every month, go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast. And hey, I want to tell you about another show here at Multitude, Big Game Hunger. 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[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And for this cocktail, I will admit, I searched for gnome-related cocktails on some of my favorite cocktail websites.
AMANDA: And Julia, what'd you find?
JULIA: So from Imbibe, they shared this incredible recipe that was originally inspired by the bar, Three Dots and a Dash, which is on my Tiki Bar bucket list.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: The cocktail is called, "You Don't Gnome Me".
AMANDA: Very good.
JULIA: It features tequila, apple brandy, lime, pineapple juice, couple of, like, nutty and cinnamon-y ingredients, and guava puree. And honestly, Amanda, I will drink any drink that has guava if I see it on a menu, so I knew this was going to be a good cocktail.
AMANDA: Delish.
JULIA: Now, you might notice that this, despite being a tiki style drink, has a little bit of a wintery spin to it, right? The apple brandy, the cinnamon-y and nutty flavors, and there's a bit of a reason behind this. It is because that as the Nisse became more and more popular among Norwegian and Scandinavian culture, they became more associated with winter and with Christmas time. You'll notice that in the story I told right before the break, the Nisse was very much a creature of the winter. It was making sure that the household managed—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —to survive through the harshest months of the year, right?
AMANDA: Which makes total sense from our late, great Beaivi episode to now, especially in places where the sun is scarce in the wintertime, that is the hardest time and the most crucial time to lean on the help of everyone available to you to make it through that difficult period of the year.
JULIA: Another reason why I was like, "Maybe the Nisse is socialist."
AMANDA: Maybe, maybe.
JULIA: Maybe. Who can say? So this association with wintertime, in particular, and Christmastime, started around the 19th century and continued on from there. Their first, like, mainstream mention was really in the works of Hans Christian Andersen, highlighted in several of his fairy tales, including The Goblin and the Grocer, which— that's the translation into English. The original term used in Danish was actually Nisse.
AMANDA: No way. Very cool.
JULIA: Yeah. Isn't that interesting? From there, especially during the Norwegian romantic nationalism period, which was in the later 19th century, the Nisse became cemented as a Norwegian symbol, and they were featured in mass produced books and art, but in particular, on Christmas cards and in Christmas books.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Now, they started to be depicted as accompanying Father Christmas, as his little assistants, kind of how we picture the Christmas elves of today, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Mimicking Father Christmas's look of woolen gray trousers, long jackets, big black boots, and, of course, the red hat.
AMANDA: You gotta. That's the Christmas color, Julia, like Jesus' blood, and also presents.
JULIA: Exactly? Okay. And you'll also remember earlier in the episode, I mentioned that Nisse meant Nils, which translates to Nicholas, so—
AMANDA: Damn. Bunch of little Nicky boys.
JULIA: It is theorized that it is because of St. Nicholas and their association with Christmas and with wintertime. Again, a lot of these things are like—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —Christian whitewashed, I would say. So it's like, did one come before the other, or did the other one come first and then we're kind of trying to squeeze it into the box that's labeled Christianity? Who can say, really? Now, I'm going to tell you one of the best and the thing that excited me the most, Amanda, about the Nisse, which is they are canonically anti-Nazi.
AMANDA: Hey, this is great. Not a thing I expected to cover in this episode. Love it.
JULIA: Love it. So specifically, they became a symbol of protest and resistance in Norway during the Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1945.
AMANDA: Wow. You love to see it. Go, Norwegians.
JULIA: So it was sort of like a— an underground movement, sort of understanding amongst the Norwegian people, but it makes sense, since at this point, the Nisse was already considered a huge symbol of what represented Norway, what—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —represented the Norwegian people, right?
AMANDA: And having some amount of nationalism and national identity to, obviously, go against the imperialist German project.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. So to the point where in 1941, a year into the Nazi occupation, a print shop owner issued a series of nine different Christmas cards that he printed himself, where a Nisse wished a Merry Christmas to all Norwegians.
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: Like, "Hey—"
AMANDA: Don't love nationalism as the solve for all anti-fascism, that hasn't served us very well. But you know what? It's a good start.
JULIA: To the point, this was so widely kind of distributed around the Christmas season that on December 22nd of that same year, 1941, the country's post offices were ordered to confiscate all of the cards because the Nazis realized, "Oh, shit, this is a symbol of resistance. That little guy with the red hat, no, no, no, we can't have that." And it became so synonymous with Norwegian freedom and resistance that people were even forbidden from wearing red hats until the end of the Nazi occupation in 1945.
AMANDA: Huge. And here in 2025, I'm thinking, "More propaganda, y'all. What a good idea. Let's get on that Antifa propaganda, please."
JULIA: Let's find a fun, little cryptic guy. Maybe it's Mothman.
AMANDA: Maybe it is Mothman.
JULIA: And maybe now Mothman is our symbol of resistance.
AMANDA: I mean, Mothman inherently pro public infrastructure, right? It was a failure of public infrastructure—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —that led to Mothman's creation. I feel like Mothman would not want that to be repeated.
JULIA: I agree.
AMANDA: Canonically strong. You know, gotta be strong to fight the resistance. Juicy ass, it's important to stay hot in the resistance.
JULIA: Yes, it's very important to stay hot in the resistance.
AMANDA: And four, it makes use of some native pollinators, which moths are, and they don't get the love of the birds and the bees and whatnot, but they also count.
JULIA: Yeah, I agree. I agree. So if someone wants to get on that Mothman as a symbol of resistance—
AMANDA: Could be something.
JULIA: —could be fun.
AMANDA: Let's give it a go.
JULIA: Could unify us all.
AMANDA: It's worth a shot.
JULIA: Amanda, at this time, we come to the present, to the garden gnome. While we know now why they look the way that they look now, we don't really know how they ended up in our garden beds, right?
AMANDA: Very true. Obviously, there is the homestead of it all. We talked mostly about the buildings by keeping things shipshape within buildings, presumably keeping the outside out and the inside in. But I think of it now as a thing that people just have in their gardens and, like, flowers specifically, that is just ornamental.
JULIA: I would say, first off, if you would like to do a full deep dive into this particular topic of the history of the garden gnome, I would check out the book Garden Gnomes: A History by Twigs Way, which is an amazing name for a garden historian.
AMANDA: Incredible. I hope you named yourself y'all, because that is so good.
JULIA: Yes. So she believes, much like we have talked about so far in these two episodes, that the shape of these creatures comes from our folkloric origins that we've discussed. She also points out that, often, cultures would keep stone representations of house spirits in their homes. You know, we've talked about this in several of our episodes that we've talked about house spirits, one being the idea of, like, the small altar that a lot of houses would have in ancient Rome to the point where, like, we would have multiple carvings and stuff like that inside households that would represent our brownies and our kobolds and our dome of voice, right? It was, however, during the Renaissance period that it started to become popular for Italians, in particular, to put small stone figures in their gardens.
AMANDA: And, Julia, is this why all of the Italians in Queens have wee lions on the sides of their driveways? And also Mother Mary of Christ.
JULIA: I thought you were gonna ask that one, which we lovingly call in my household, Mary on the half shell.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Because she's always in the kind of shell-shaped thing.
AMANDA: Cover? Altar?
JULIA: Yeah, I guess. Like dome, half-dome—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —I suppose. And we've talked about this before, but the reason that is, is because a lot of the Virgin Mary's imagery is coincided with Venus and Aphrodite.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And Aphrodite came out of the clam shell.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. The primordial soup.
JULIA: Just reminding you. But what's interesting is Way says that they most likely— the garden gnome, most likely came from Germany's black forest region and started to kind of appear in the early 19th century. Now, these figures, which were first made of wood, but eventually began to be made of terracotta and even porcelain, were considered pieces of art, right? They were definitely meant to be display pieces. They were three feet tall. They were expensive to make. They were hand-painted. So most likely, they weren't meant to be exposed to the elements like—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —they would be in a garden, but rather to be shown off inside the household, again, as a piece of art, right?
AMANDA: Totally. We didn't get the glazing of ceramics and the availability of dyes that could stand up to the sun until much more recently.
JULIA: Yes. And we'll talk about that in a second. But these early, quote-unquote, "garden gnomes," even though they weren't out in the garden yet, looked very similar to how they look now. Obviously, they were taller. I mean, when you picture a garden gnome, you're picturing, like, what, a foot tall, more or less?
AMANDA: Yeah. About, like, 12 to 18 inches, maybe.
JULIA: These ones were triple or double that size, so they were, like, about three feet tall.
AMANDA: That's a whole meter, y'all.
JULIA: They had those red conical hats that we now associate with the Nisse and therefore, the garden gnome. And in these early versions, they all had, like, little jobs, you know?
AMANDA: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JULIA: Sometimes they were carpenters, sometimes they were fishermen. They were hunters, a lot of the early ones. Like Way in her books and in interviews, is like, "It was wild the first time I saw one that just, like, had a gun." I was like, "That's a great point."
AMANDA: Oh, no. I mean, if we're talking about, you know, deterring Nazis, then.
JULIA: Yeah, not bad, not bad. But, of course, a lot of their occupations were gardeners.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So from the Black Forest of Germany, it was eventually brought to England by a Sir Charles Isham starting in the 1840s, who imported a large number of these statues, and rather than preserving them inside, decided that he was going to use them to decorate the massive rockery garden that he had at his estate in Northamptonshire.
AMANDA: Julia, how did I not piece together that it was a moneyed member of the gentry that had too much time and land and needed to make his garden weird, such that all the ladies would come to the yard.
JULIA: Amanda, you're going to love this man so much.
AMANDA: Oh, man.
JULIA: Because, according to Way, he was considered, quote, "extremely eccentric."
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Quote, the fact that the first person that starts collecting them in England is a pro socialist, vegetarian teetotaler who believes little folk are real, is not a great way to establish their legitimacy."
AMANDA: Cool. What a weirdo. Affectionate. I love this person.
JULIA: I mean, listen, that's Way's words there, and she can think what she likes about that, but to be honest, that makes me want to include them in my garden more.
AMANDA: Yeah. This is incredibly charming, and with all the caveats that probably this person's wealth is from chattel slavery and other terrible things. What a charming use of your money to go to the Black Forest region and be like, "Give me several 100 of these bad boys." And then someone's like, "Yo, did you hear that Tommy got a new garden filled with little guys?"
JULIA: Yeah. "Charlie, Charlie, where'd you get those cool, little guys from?"
AMANDA: And then someone has like a hermit in a hermitage next door and they're like, "Hey, I only have one hermit."
JULIA: From Sir Isham came another interesting member of the royalty, who also took a liking to the garden gnomes, which was Sir Frank Crisp, which is another great name.
AMANDA: Wow. Okay.
JULIA: So he decorated his 62-acre estate with so many of these German garden gnomes, and then at some point, he opened his gardens up to the public in the early 20th century, which, you know, kind of allowed the average citizen to experience them for the first time.
AMANDA: Got it. And, like, the corgis, they said, "I want one."
JULIA: Yes. And so non-royal but wealthy land owners began to adopt them into their own gardens, and they became this sort of, like, arbiter of high-end style, right?
AMANDA: Man, if we ever feel like modernity is, like, uniquely fucked or frivolous, it's stories like these that make me just think we have always been this way. We have always—
JULIA: We have always been this way.
AMANDA: —seen someone rich, do something wild and be like, "I mean, I guess that's what we're doing now."
JULIA: Yes. At this point, they were featured in the royal international horticultural exhibition of 1912. But, Amanda, that was the beginning of the end, right? Trends come and trends go.
AMANDA: They do.
JULIA: And soon after, the rich considered them not tasteful enough anymore.
AMANDA: Pedestrian. If some lady in Surrey's got one, fuck me. I'm never putting it in my estate.
JULIA: Exactly. But we get to the point where we fast forward to the post-war period of the 1950s and the 1960s. Again, keep in mind, these were from Germany originally. We had beef with Germany around 1912 as you might imagine, and then continued to have beef with Germany for the next 30 years or so. But by the 1950s and '60s, not only was it easier to mass produce these gnomes, rather than have them be a work of art. Now, they weren't just accessible to the rich, they were accessible to everyone, right? Suddenly, they are smaller, they are cheaper, and like all things that were once expensive and only for the rich, only to become accessible for the average person. They were suddenly considered kitschy or low class.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: We see that happen with stuff like gelatin or aluminum, you know? The thing that was for rich people, then became easily accessible to other people, and now they're like, "Eh."
AMANDA: I guess train travel, like that was originally a huge update to horseback. And then the rich were like, "Feh, private automobiles." Now, we all have private automobiles. And then the rich were like, "Feh."
JULIA: Oh, yeah. It's like the horse—
AMANDA: "Computer cars."
JULIA: It's the horse car switch, Amanda, right?
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah. I think so.
JULIA: Also the idea of, like, the postal service. We talked about that in a recent episode as well, where it was like, "The postal service used to only be for rich people and now, everyone can send their horny Valentines whenever they want."
Amand: Exactly right. Now, almost nobody can use a postal system if it is, in fact, privatized in the US.
JULIA: Heh.
AMANDA: Hooray.
JULIA: Yay. Trends come, trends go. But, however, now that these garden gnomes are more accessible, they are cheaper.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: They are smaller, they're easier to produce. They become really popular in the United States. Now, they become popular in the United States not only because, you know, there's, like, a sort of English to America pipeline of things that are cool, but there's also a book— there's also an illustrated book that came out in the 1970s titled Gnomes.
AMANDA: I really thought there was going to be more to that title.
JULIA: It really feels like there should be. It was written by a man named Wil Huygen. It was illustrated by Rien Poortvilet. And it was originally a Dutch fiction book that explains the life and habitat of gnomes in a, sort of, like in-universe fiction fashion. So, like, sort of like a biology book might do about, I don't know, the lives of gorillas, for example. It had beautiful illustrations. It even had, like, textbook notes, like jotted down in the margins, sort of style. You know exactly—
AMANDA: Oh, man.
JULIA: —the kind of book that I'm talking about, right?
AMANDA: I am, like, smiling and nodding, because there was such a glut of these in the late '90s and early 2000s when we were in sort of prime like— young adult wasn't really a genre. For anyone who's younger than us, you may not know this, but like young adult books as like complex books that were for people who did not yet want to read about sex, necessarily or shouldn't, was not really a genre until, like, the early 2000s. And so there were a ton of these books that were, like, four big freaking nerds to buy, essentially, in-universe encyclopedias of, like, fairies, dinosaurs, you know, all kinds of things.
JULIA: Yeah. I just sent you a link, Amanda, to just some of the images from the book itself, so you can see how beautifully illustrated it was. And also that sort of marginalia style that I mentioned earlier.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. Oh, that's really good.
JULIA: That's the good stuff, right?
AMANDA: That's very cool.
JULIA: So this was incredibly successful in the United States. It sold almost a million copies in the first year, being published here in English in the United States.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Americans loved gnomes. They loved them.
AMANDA: We love those charming little fellows.
JULIA: It was so successful that it led to several different spin-off books, toys, clothing, games, et cetera. But most important to us here on the podcast, it standardized the modern conception of gnome here in the US, as well as led to a, I'll say it, expected garden gnome explosion.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: It's also a really interesting book, just as an aside, where it is very '70s. Late '60s to early '70s was kind of the first appearance of the environmentalism movement here in the United States. And in particular, this book makes a special note to say that gnomes used to live in society among humans, but due to pollution and deforestation—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —they retreated into their secret homes.
AMANDA: That really jives with the— and I'm using— that really grooves, let me say, with the sort of, like, industrial on [43:32] The sort of, like, post-war yearning for something more that a ton of American pop culture reflected in that period as well.
JULIA: Yeah, this was, like, maybe a couple years after Silent Spring, which really raised awareness to the fact that pesticides were killing species in droves and droves, and actually, like, led to the formation of the EPA, which is incredible. So this is very much in the same vein as— this is fiction. It is teaching us about gnomes, a species that doesn't exist, but at the same time, it is raising awareness for actual environmental issues that could be addressed, and like teaching the next generation about like, "Hey, we should care about whether or not all the trees are gonna get cut down or not."
AMANDA: Yeah, totally. The Smurfs were also coming up around this period, did they not?
JULIA: Amanda, you were right on the money. The Smurfs were, I believe, the 1950s. I would say the late 1950s, around like 1958 or '59, and they were Belgian, so not exactly the sort of Scandinavian area that we're talking about with the Nisse and likewise. But they are very similar in that they're like, "Oh, you know, little people who are living in the forests. They are living in these, like, mushroom-shaped huts and everything like that." So I think we were very much sort of primed to care about these sort of creatures by the time that gnomes came out.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: Gnomes being the book, not just the creatures that we're talking about for this episode, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: I'll also say that the book even ends with the message being like, "Hey, we should stop attacking each other and also stop destroying the environment. And if we do that, maybe one day the gnomes will return."
AMANDA: That's a very good message.
JULIA: It's really sweet. It's really sweet. I like it a lot. The gnomes, as I mentioned, extremely popular in the 1970s. So, of course, by the 1980s, they were being satirized and turned on their heads, right? Like, you'll see a lot of— if you search '80s garden gnome, you'll see a lot of very raunchy gnomes, I would say. There are—
AMANDA: Ahhh.
JULIA: —topless lady gnomes. There are gnomes with their pants down, taking little poops in the garden.
AMANDA: Now that you mentioned it, the image of a gnome's naked butt is in there. It's in there. It got in there somehow.
JULIA: Yeah. There— there's a— you know, the classic sort of gnome throwing up rainbows vibe, right?
AMANDA: That one is less familiar to me, but I'm following. I've definitely seen gnomes that have, like, different kinds of flags. Gnomes that are like Christmas gnomes and Halloween gnomes, and, you know, all of— Easter Bunny gnomes.
JULIA: Yes. The gnomes— the gnome that I mentioned with the rainbows, is a distinct Gravity Falls reference that people often GIF and meme online—
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: —so from that sort of like, "Oh, look at the funny things we can make these gnomes do," sort of thing. We sort of see them become this thing of mockery, something like not really to be taken all that seriously. But according to Twigs Way, our girl, chances are they won't disappear anytime soon. Quote, "They're here to stay, because we keep reinventing them. Who knows what we'll do with them next?"
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: And I think to a certain extent that is true. Like, we've seen them in movies, we've seen them on TV, we've seen them in TV shows, and even like ads. Do you remember the traveling gnome series of TV advertisements?
AMANDA: I was just looking this up, Julia, because I was like, "Didn't— like I want— how did Travelocity decide to, like, co-opt the gnome into a marketing campaign?" Apparently, this is a decades long phenomenon.
JULIA: So it was, and it all started with the French movie Amélie.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Where she stole a gnome, and then she, like, took a bunch of pictures with the gnome, and was like, sending them to, I think— I haven't seen Amélie in so many years. I think the man who used to live in her apartment.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Yes. And so it's definitely, like, become a little bit of a cultural phenomenon. They're not as huge as they were in the 1970s, but, like, gnomes still have some sway to this day. There was a movie made in the past 10 years, I want to say, called Gnomeo & Juliet. There was Sherlock Gnomes, you know? Like, these are things that are actually getting big budgets to make movies for. So gnomes have not lost their relevance, I would say.
AMANDA: Absolutely not. And they— they're really, for me, just like implanted in my general, you know, magical creature, sort of like Rolodex, where— if I think about, like, "Oh yeah, there's like, elves, and trolls, and gnomes, and fairies, and yetis." And, you know, it really does mishmash together in a way that really surprises me because, you know, traditions of the fair folk and how spirits stretch back even before we have, you know modern languages to describe these things. And so knowing that the funny, you know, dude in maybe your grandma or your aunt's garden comes from a long lineage of spirits that are there to help people negotiate the environment, keep themselves safe, and hopefully at harmony with nature. Gives them just a little more depth, in my opinion.
JULIA: Yeah. So maybe you don't want to reserve the gnome just for your grandma or your aunt's garden. Maybe you want a gnome for your garden. And hey, like you know, you can get one online, or you could head to your local garden center to see if they have them in stock. And I bet you, I bet you, there's at least one garden gnome that you can adopt from your local garden center.
AMANDA: I think that's a wonderful idea. And Julia, any superstitions about where to place them, whether to buy them yourself, or gift them to others that we should know about?
JULIA: Nah. Go nuts.
AMANDA: Go nuts, baby.
JULIA: Throw 'em where you want to throw 'em. I would say, put them in an area that maybe your garden isn't as thriving as much as you want it to.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And maybe it'll bring you a little bit of gardening good luck.
AMANDA: I love that. If nothing else, draw some whimsical smiles from fellow Conspiriters who know what it is you're about.
JULIA: They know what it's all about, so—
AMANDA: They know what you're all about.
JULIA: They gnome what you're all about. Whoa.
AMANDA: It's just so easy to pun. It's such a homophone. It's good, it's good.
JULIA: It's so good. Well, the next time, you are gracing a garden with your presence, Amanda, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, satyrs.
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