{"id":7369,"date":"2015-12-24T09:02:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T17:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/nordic-countries-in-annual-contest-to-claim-the-real-santa\/"},"modified":"2015-12-24T09:02:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T17:02:40","slug":"nordic-countries-in-annual-contest-to-claim-the-real-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/nordic-countries-in-annual-contest-to-claim-the-real-santa\/","title":{"rendered":"Nordic countries in annual contest to claim the real Santa"},"content":{"rendered":"

HELSINKI<\/strong> \u2014 Most kids learn that Santa Claus comes from the North Pole, but children in Scandinavia are taught he lives a bit further south. Where exactly is a matter of much debate, with businesses in Finland, Sweden and Norway competing to cash in on the cache that comes with claiming Santa\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n

Finnish children know his home to be in the mythological Korvatunturi (Ear mountain) in the northern wilderness of the Finnish part of Lapland while Swedes say he hails from the small town of Mora. Norwegians claim he was born hundreds of years ago under a stone in Drobak on the Oslo fjord.<\/p>\n

Danes, who enjoy milder and mostly snowless winters, teach their children that Santa\u2019s home is on the distant Arctic island of Greenland, a sparsely populated semiautonomous Danish territory.<\/p>\n

In the battle to beat their Scandinavian neighbors, Finland\u2019s public broadcaster YLE every year sends out a video of a red-cloaked Santa leaving his log cabin on a sleigh drawn by a white reindeer in the frozen snowy landscape that reaches millions of viewers worldwide. A regular feature for the past 30 years, it was first broadcast in 1960.<\/p>\n

The biggest town in Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi, has been dubbed the official hometown of Santa Claus and depends on the myth for a large part of its yearly tourism turnover of some 210 million euros ($230 million). Situated just south of the Arctic Circle, it attracts more than 300,000 visitors annually \u2014 five times the town\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

\u201cSanta Claus is a very important and known person globally … and that\u2019s a good basis for us to build up this kind of business,\u201d Mayor Esko Lotvonen said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

The origins of Santa Claus \u2014 widely known elsewhere in Europe also as St. Nicholas \u2014 are shrouded in the mists of mythology, but the benevolent figure is believed to be based on St. Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century Greek Christian bishop who lived in a province of the Byzantine Empire that now is Turkey.<\/p>\n

Danes, Swedes and Norwegians base their Santa on a mythological figure \u2014 a gnome known as a \u201ctomte\u201d or \u201cnisse\u201d in the Scandinavian languages \u2014 whereas Finns, who are ethnically and linguistically a different people, know Santa as \u201cjoulupukki,\u201d a Christmas buck or goat, derived from old pagan Norse mythology.<\/p>\n

In the Nordic region, Santa doesn\u2019t clamber down chimneys but visits homes on Dec. 24, meeting the children, or if he\u2019s too busy leaving behind a bag or basket of presents.<\/p>\n

Mora in central Sweden has claimed itself as Santa\u2019s home since 1984, with some 50,000 visiting Santaworld annually.<\/p>\n

Nicklas Lind, director of Santaworld, which includes Santa\u2019s house, a troll safari, moose park and restaurants, says the town, known for its knives and an annual 90-kilometer cross-country skiing race, welcomes the extra money brought in by Santa but was unable to give figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important for the region and the town, for hotels and skiing,\u201d he said. \u201cWe get some millions; that\u2019s all I can say.\u201d<\/p>\n

The message that Santa\u2019s home is somewhere in the Nordic region has spread far and wide. Santaworld\u2019s post office has received 400,000 letters this year addressed to Santa, his post office in Rovaniemi claims more than 500,000 letters with 100,000 more expected before the year-end.<\/p>\n

The Norwegian Santa in Drobak is too busy to talk as Christmas approaches. Instead, his cousin Tom picks up the phone but doesn\u2019t want to discuss business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time for Christmas cheer not for competition, but we can\u2019t be angry if our good colleagues in Sweden, Finland and Greenland think otherwise,\u201d he says. \u201cAll Norwegian children know the real Santa lives here.\u201d<\/p>\n

A group of schoolboys enjoying their Christmas break at a shopping mall in Helsinki are just as confident Santa is from Finland.<\/p>\n

Six-year-old Matias, who doesn\u2019t want to give his family name, looks puzzled when asked the question, before blurting out: \u201cHe lives in Korvatunturi (Ear mountain), of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he\u2019s coming to see us again, he did last year,\u201d Matias says.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press reporter James Brooks contributed to this report from Rovaniemi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HELSINKI \u2014 Most kids learn that Santa Claus comes from the North Pole, but children in Scandinavia are taught he lives a bit further south. Where exactly is a matter of much debate, with businesses in Finland, Sweden and Norway competing to cash in on the cache that comes with claiming Santa\u2019s hometown. Finnish children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":7370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7369"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}