Icelanders have a good collection of all kinds of legends and fairy tales about various creatures, including about 13 Santa Clauses or yule lads as they are called and have very strange names. They live in caves in the mountains of Iceland.
The 13 yule lads are most famous but the yule lads are much more or around 100. Icelanders have a different set of yule lads in part of the country. Or it was like that in the old days today it is not as well known.
They also all had very strange names and I’m going to take some fore examples:
Kertasleikir or Candle licker. This one clearly wanted to eat candles, not just steal them.
Reykjasvelgur Or Smoke eater. I think he liked eating smoke or breathing him in or something. It was probably the smoke coming from the kitchen which smelled good.
Faldafeykir or Hate blower (Faldur is a hat in the Icelandic national costume for women). He likes to blow up the skirt on women and their hats so he was a very naughty yule lad this fella in the old days.
Lunuslettir og Lungs thrower. He was a horror yule lad, his lungs were not in his body but hung on the outside of it. And his favorite thing was to chase children and try to beat them with your bloody and slimy lungs. A crazy yule lad.
Female yule lads
There were also several There were also several female yule lads like:s like:
Flotsokka or sock yule lad who liked to steal woolen socks.
Flotnös or Big nose who liked stuffing things up his big nose.
There are also stories that the yule lads try to trick children because they were all cannibals like their mother of course in the old days, but today the yule lads just eat normal food.