The Goat of Gavle

[Sheilbh]

CityMetric Advent 11: The town where goat-based arson is a Christmas tradition
By Jonn Elledge


The 2005 goat, shortly before someone burnt it. Image: Broken Haiku on Flickr, licenced under creative commons.

The Yule Goat is a Scandinavian tradition which involves making a great big goat out of straw and tying red ribbons round it. It seems to have started out life as some kind of harvest offering linked to Thor, whose preferred method of transport was a goat-drawn chariot. In the pre-Santa 19th century, Swedish people sometimes used to dress as goats to deliver presents. The Yule Goat, in other words, is a symbol of warmth, a symbol of generosity, a symbol of plenty.

The Gävle Goat, by contrast, is a symbol of a stubborn refusal to accept the blindingly obvious fact that people really like setting fire to giant goats made of straw. It stands as a monument to man's pigheaded stupidity.

A bit of background here. In 1966 Stig Gavlén, an advertising consultant living in the eastern Swedish city of Gävle, came up with the idea of adorning the town with a giant yule goat in place of a public Christmas tree.

With the help of some local bigwigs, he made this dream a reality. The goat was 13 metres tall, 7 metres long and weighed three tonnes. It stood proudly in the city's town square for the whole of December.

Then, on New Year's Eve, someone burnt it down.

No matter, you might think. Christmas was over, it was insured, and, anyway, these things happen if you built a giant goat out of straw. So a local business group took over the sponsorship of the goat, and agreed to build a new one next year.

All was fine for a couple of years but, in 1969, it burnt down again. In 1970, it burnt down again: that time it lasted all of six hours. The business lobby group, a bit sick of seeing its goat go up in flames, stopped sponsoring it. But someone else took over, and the goats kept burning.

The Gävle Goat Wikipedia entry is, very possibly, the greatest page on the entirety of the internet. It's pretty well footnoted but, as ever with Wikipedia, salt must be taken. Nonetheless, some extracts:

1972: The goat collapsed because of sabotage.

1974: Burnt.

1976: Hit by a car.

1978: Again, the goat was kicked to pieces.

1979: The goat was burnt even before it was erected. A new one was built and fireproofed. It was destroyed and broken into pieces.

...and on it goes. In 1983, the legs are destroyed. In 1985, the town erects a 2 metre high metal fence, hires security and leaves soldiers from the local infantry regiment on guard. It lasts until January, then it burns down.

In 1986, apparently not put off by any of this, the business lobby decide they want a piece of the action once again, and start building their own goat. From then onwards, some years, there are two goats. That just means there are twice as many goats to burn.

By 1988 the burning of the goat has become such a tradition that, a thousand miles away in England, people are placing bets on when it will go up in smoke. In 1998 there's a major blizzard on the night of 11 December, and the volunteer guards go to get some coffee on the assumption that you can't burn a goat in a snowstorm. This assumption turns out to be wrong.


The remains of the goat. 12 December, 1988. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

In 2001, a guy from Cleveland Ohio, who's only in the country for three weeks, burns the goat again, because he thinks it's part of the tradition, and it's worth quoting Wikipedia once again on this:

The court confiscated Jones's cigarette lighter with the argument that he clearly was not able to handle it. Jones stated in court that he was no "goat burner", and believed that he was taking part in a completely legal goat-burning tradition.

In 2005 the goat is burned by two guys, one dressed as Santa and the other as the gingerbread man. By 2006 they're storing the goat in a secret location. They need a secret location for their giant straw goat.

Last year they soaked the goat in an anti-flammable liquid. Guess what happened on 21 December?

In all, something like half the goats built in Gävle since the tradition began have burnt down. Another chunk have been deestroyed in some other way. The survival rate for these things is barely one in three.

On, and in 1968 a couple had sex in it, but apparently that time it survived.

There are two lessons here. One is that festive traditions are pretty mutable. The Gävle authorities think the tradition is erecting the giant Yule Goat. Everyone else thinks the tradition is trying to set fire to it. Both these traditions have co-existed happily, sort of, for nearly half a century.

The other lesson is that people really like setting fire to goats.

For those who are interested in the fate of the goat this year, the authorities have helpfully set up the Gavlebocken Twitter feed. "I'm the biggest straw goat in the world," it says. "Follow my struggle to survive arson attacks."


At time of writing, the goat is still there.

Reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob1rYlCpOnM

[CountDeMoney]

For those who are interested in the fate of the goat this year, the authorities have helpfully set up the Gavlebocken Twitter feed. "I'm the biggest straw goat in the world," it says. "Follow my struggle to survive arson attacks."

  Yeah, right.


You build a giant goat made of straw.  That's just sticking your arm into the gorilla cage, and then jabbing said gorilla with a walking cane.  One of the four-prong versions.  Without the rubber stoppers on the bottom.

[Jacob]

For those who are interested in the fate of the goat this year, the authorities have helpfully set up the Gavlebocken Twitter feed. "I'm the biggest straw goat in the world," it says. "Follow my struggle to survive arson attacks."

  Yeah, right.


You build a giant goat made of straw.  That's just sticking your arm into the gorilla cage, and then jabbing said gorilla with a walking cane.  One of the four-prong versions.  Without the rubber stoppers on the bottom.

I think it's pretty well accepted by everyone involved that the goat may burn, or it may not, and that that is the whole point of the thing.

[CountDeMoney]

I wish we had a giant goat to burn.  Alas, all we have are abandoned homes.

[Josquius]

I never did get around to going to gavle to see it.

Nice that the swedes keep making goats whilst in the uk they actively stop bonfires

[KRonn]

Goat was hit by cars, burned, kicked to pieces. Wow, tough Christmas crowd in Sveden!   

[Barrister]

A Møøse once bit my sister

[lustindarkness]

If only we only had a languish swede that loved goats. 

[MadImmortalMan]

I wish we had a giant goat to burn. 

We have Detroit.

[Malthus]

I wish we had a giant goat to burn. 

We have Detroit.

The difference is that when you burn a giant goat, you notice a difference. 

[Martinus]

Here in Warsaw we have a giant rainbow made of (now supposedly fire-proof) fake flowers. It is one block away from where I live. It has been burned - and rebuilt - about 6 times by now.

Originally, these were mainly nazis and the like who tried to burn it. I have a feeling it has now become some sort of a drunken achievement.

[Josquius]

Those streets look surprisingly nice. Is been led to believe Warsaw was the archetypical eastern block concrete mess

[Valmy]

Maybe those are all post-1989 buildings.

[Camerus]

I wish we had a giant goat to burn.  Alas, all we have are abandoned homes.

[Martinus]

Maybe those are all post-1989 buildings.

No, quite the contrary. In fact, part of the buildings on the left side are the genuine soc-realist architecture of the 50s. Warsaw is quite nice, actually (not sure if those of you who visited agree). It has a lot of green areas, especially in the city centre. In the screenshot, I think only one building is younger than 40 years or so.