In this episode of the How to Live in Denmark podcast, host Kay Xander Mellish explains the Danish folklore figure of the Nisse, a household spirit distinct from Santa Claus, and its central role in December celebrations. He describes the Nisse’s mischievous behavior, its expectation of rice pudding on December 24, and how families interact with them through gifts, Advent treats, and decorative items. Mellish highlights the commercial explosion of Nisse‑related merchandise, noting a personal survey at a housewares store that carries 455 Nisse products ranging from soft dolls to poly‑resin figurines, tiny doors, doormats, wooden shoes, and more. He discusses family traditions such as daily or weekly Advent gifts, crawling Nisse decorations, and workplace customs like assigning a “Nisse venn” and wearing Nisse hats, recounting a cultural clash at Carlsberg when French colleagues refused to don the hats. The episode situates the Nisse within broader Nordic and European mythic creatures, emphasizing its symbolic link to Denmark’s self‑image as a small but clever nation. Finally, Mellish announces that the year‑long podcast series will be compiled into a book and audiobook titled The Danish Year, available in early 2026.
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Hello and welcome to the How to Live in Denmark podcast. I'm Kay Xander Mellish. The Nisse. Nisse is a centuries-old figure of folklore in Denmark, and in December, Nisses get a lot of attention all month, while Julemanden, Santa Claus, really only has one big day near the end. With their short stature and pointed red hats, Nisse are often confused with Christmas elves, although they're not the same. Elves exist mostly to help Santa in his workshop, but nisse have busy lives of their own, closely related to an individual household. They live in the walls of the home and get up to mischief, like hiding things or turning the milk different colors. They expect a bowl of rice pudding on December 24th and will create trouble if they don't get one. Nisse are a beloved tradition in Denmark, and since Denmark is a capitalist country and currently rather wealthy, Nisse have become big business in Denmark. Although Statistics Denmark, the public agency that tracks nearly everything else in Denmark, does not track spending on Nisse-related items every year, I did a little survey on my own at the housewares store where I like to work during the Christmas rush. We currently carry 455 Nisse-related products. We have soft fabric Nisse dolls for cuddling or for decorating. Ornamental Nisse with strings or stockings for hanging on the tree. Hand-painted figurine Nisse for sitting on the shelf. We have an entire wall of those polyresin figurines for sale, each with their own name. Asbjørn, Thorkild, Elvin, Liam, Olivia. Our line also includes products for your household Nisse's own use. A little door for the Nisse to come out of the wall at night, usually placed down by the floorboards. A Nisse doormat. Wooden shoes for the Nisse to wear. They used to be quite popular in Denmark, not just the Netherlands. In fact, one persistent Danish euphemism for death is at stille tråd. He has parked his wooden shoes. At our shop, we also sell a tiny rocking chair for the Nisse, a tiny honey cake for the Nisse, and a little sled or a little bucket for them. No modern items, no iPhone, no Cybertruck, just old-fashioned equipment like a little toolbox and a tiny bowl of rice pudding. The Nisse-interested Dane— usually families with small children, but sometimes an older lady who lives on her own— sets all these items up in the house. The actress Greta Garbo, who was Swedish, reportedly spent her elder, isolated years with an entire Nisse family living underneath her sofa. For families with children, the Nisse bring gifts during the holiday season. Some families do those gifts every day in December. For others, it's just every Sunday during Advent. We sell a lot of small Advent gifts at the shop as well. And some families hang up kravlenisse, crawling nisse, which are little paper or transparent plastic images of nisse that appear to be crawling up the wall or window. I'll put a couple of photos up at howtoliveindenmark.com. These aren't as popular as they once were, perhaps because they don't cost much and nobody can make any money off them. Anyway, holiday season has other roles for the Nisse. At the office, adults might be assigned a Nisse venn, a Nisse friend, somebody they exchange secret gifts with. They might even wear a pointed Nisse hat, which looks a bit like a Santa hat. at a Christmas party as a sign of good humor and lack of pretension about themselves. This is especially true if the person wearing the hat is the person in charge, like the department head. These Nisse hats can be a point of contention with internationals. I write in my book How to Live in Denmark that I had a bad experience when I worked at Carlsberg, the famous Danish beer company, with a group of French colleagues. We were doing video greetings from around the world and asked our various divisions to film themselves wearing the red and white Nisse hat. Let's just say that the stylish French colleagues really, really did not want to wear the hat. I don't think my Danish colleagues expected that reaction. Nisse are so much a part of Christmas life in Denmark that they never expected that some other group of people wouldn't be as enthusiastic as they were. Other countries have creatures that are somewhat like Nisse. Certainly Norway and Sweden do. Germany has gnomes. Ireland has leprechauns. But nowhere else are they so central to the Christmas tradition. Nisse are small, cute, and clever, often outwitting the big creatures around them, which is somewhat how the capable little country of Denmark likes to see itself. And that's the How to Live in Denmark podcast for this week. This concludes our Danish Year series of 2025. Every month this year, we've looked at events and things that are simply expected to happen every year in Denmark, even if they're not formal holidays. Good news though, early in 2026, All 12 podcasts will be collected into a new book called The Danish Year, which you will be able to buy in text form on Amazon, Google Books, or Apple Books, or listen to in audiobook form on Spotify and other audiobook spots. You can already hear our current 5 How to Live in Denmark audiobooks on Spotify for free if you have Spotify Premium. Something fun for the holidays. See you next year.
