No, Santa Claus Is Not Inspired by Odin

I’ve spent a lot of time debunking the perennially popular misconception that modern Anglophone Christmas customs are of ancient “pagan” origin. My most thorough article on the subject remains this one I originally posted two years ago. One of the more popular claims associated with this misconception is that Santa Claus is actually somehow inspired by the “pagan” Norse god Óðinn, who is closely associated with wisdom, war, death, and the runic alphabet. I already debunked this claim in this article I posted two years ago about the history of Santa Claus, which I highly recommend reading, but I did so only briefly and I feel that this notion is so common that it deserves a more thorough rebuttal.

Jackson Crawford, who has a PhD in Old Norse studies, spent many years teaching the subject at various universities, and is now a professional public educator on the subject, posted a video on his YouTube channel last year explaining why Óðinn is not Santa Claus. Crawford’s video is excellent, but it is, for the most part, merely a simple comparison of Óðinn and Santa Claus and it does not take into account the history of Santa Claus. In this article, I intend to give this misconception the proper, in-depth refutation it deserves—one that fully takes into account Santa Claus’s complicated history.

Why historical circumstances make the idea of Óðinn as a prototype for Santa Claus implausible

As I discuss in my article about the history of Santa Claus from two years ago, the primary source of inspiration for the modern figure of Santa Claus is the Greek bishop Nikolaos of Myra. Nikolaos was most likely a historical bishop of the city of Myra, which is located on the west coast of Asia Minor in what is now Turkey, who lived in the fourth century CE. Unfortunately, nothing reliable whatsoever is known about his life.

Possibly the earliest known mention of Nikolaos comes from the Byzantine Roman historian Prokopios of Kaisareia (lived c. 500 – after c. 565 CE) in his On Buildings 1.6. In the centuries after Prokopios’s time, Nikolaos became increasingly widely venerated in the Byzantine Roman Empire. By the ninth century CE, an enormous number of legends had become attached to him.

At this time, the Byzantine Roman hagiographer Michael the Archimandrite (fl. c. 814 – c. 842 CE) wrote a work in the Greek language titled The Life of Saint Nikolaos, which contains many of the legends that were popularly told about Nikolaos in the ninth century CE, including the oldest known attestation of what is probably the most famous legend about Nikolaos today. This famous legend, first attested by Michael the Archimandrite in the Byzantine Roman Empire in the ninth century, holds that Nikolaos once learned of the existence of a local man who had fallen on hard times due to the plotting of Satan.

This man had three daughters, all of whom were in their mid-to-late teenaged years, meaning they needed to be married off as soon as possible. Sadly, the man did not have enough money to pay for his daughters’ dowries, meaning he couldn’t marry them off, meaning they would almost certainly have no other choice than to become prostitutes in order to survive.

Nikolaos, being a kind and generous man of God, wanted to save the three girls from the dreaded fate of a life of sin and prostitution, but he was too humble to want credit and he did not want to embarrass the poor man by forcing him to publicly accept charity. He therefore secretly went to the poor man’s house under the cover of darkness while everyone was asleep and tossed a sack of gold coins in through his window. He did this for three consecutive nights, giving the man enough money to marry each of his three daughters to a fine husband.

On the third night, though, the poor man stayed awake and hid to see who was giving him the bags of gold. When he heard the bag of gold Nikolaos tossed in through the window hit the floor, he ran outside and caught up with the secret gift-bringer. He threw himself down at his feet and tried to thank him, but Nikolaos lifted the man up off the ground and made him promise to never tell anyone who had given him the money for his daughters’ dowries.

ABOVE: Twelfth-century CE Byzantine fresco from the ancient Saint Nikolaos Church in Myra depicting Saint Nikolaos saving a group of innocent soldiers who have been condemned to death. The man with the halo and the long white beard is Saint Nikolaos.

For most of the Middle Ages, Nikolaos of Myra was primarily an Eastern Orthodox saint who was primarily venerated in the Byzantine Roman Empire. In the late eleventh century CE, however, his cult started to become prominent in parts of Italy that had historically been under Byzantine Roman influence.

In the year 1087, a group of sailors from the city of Bari in southern Italy stole Nikolaos’s purported bones from his sarcophagus at Myra and brought them to Bari, where a new basilica to house the relics was soon constructed, known as the Basilica di San Nicola. Nikolaos’s bones were widely believed to possess miraculous healing powers. Consequently, the basilica housing them swiftly became a popular pilgrimage site. People from all over Italy and western Europe would travel to Bari to venerate Nikolaos’s relics.

In autumn 1096, the Frankish forces for the First Crusade happened to muster in Bari and many prayed to Nikolaos for protection and success in their campaigns. In the year 1100, a group of Venetian sailors allegedly collected somewhere around 500 tiny bone fragments from Nikolaos’s sarcophagus in Myra that the earlier sailors from Bari had missed and brought them to Venice, where they deposited them in the San Nicolò al Lido, a church dedicated to Saint Nikolaos.

ABOVE: Painting by Gentile da Fabriano depicting pilgrims exuberantly venerating the tomb of Saint Nikolaos in the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari

By the fifteenth century, the cult of Nikolaos of Myra had spread all over western Europe. By this point, Nikolaos was popularly known in western Europe as “Saint Nicholas.” He was widely seen as a bringer of secret gifts, due to the ninth-century CE legend about him secretly bringing the sacks of gold to the poor man to pay for his daughters’ dowries, and as the patron saint of children, due to a particularly grisly legend that he supposedly resurrected three young boys who had been murdered and pickled by an innkeeper.

As a result of these two traditions, in some parts of Germany and the Netherlands, a tradition arose of parents presenting gifts for their children on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, which fell on 5th December in some places and on 6th December in other places. By at least the mid-seventeenth century, these gifts sometimes included toys. (The painting below, for instance, shows a young girl receiving a doll on the feast day of Saint Nicholas.)

ABOVE: The Feast of Saint Nicholas, painted between c. 1665 and c. 1668 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Havickszoon Steen, depicting children receiving gifts for the feast day of Saint Nicholas

Starting in the sixteenth century CE, Protestant Reformers strongly opposed the veneration of saints, regarding it as a form of vile idolatry. Since Saint Nicholas was one of the most popular and widely venerated saints at the time, his cult came under particularly harsh attack.

The German Reformation leader Martin Luther (lived 1483 – 1546) advocated replacing Saint Nicholas, who was supposed to bring gifts for children on Saint Nicholas Day on 5th or 6th December, with the Christkind or Christ Child, who would leave presents for children on Christmas Day. To this day, the Christkind is the primary Christmas gift-bearer in many parts of Germany that have historically been predominantly Lutheran.

Meanwhile, people in Germany who didn’t want to get rid of Saint Nicholas managed to rebrand him as a figure known as the Weinachtsmann, or “Christmas Man,” who is portrayed as an elderly gentleman with a long white beard just like Saint Nicholas and is said to deliver presents to children on Christmas, sometimes accompanying the Christkind.

Saint Nicholas managed to survive under his original name as a December gift-bearer in the Netherlands, becoming the folkloric figure of Sint-Nicolaas or Sinterklaas, who is traditionally represented as an old man with a long white beard wearing a bishop’s robe and miter.

During the same period, the folkloric figure of Father Christmas, a personification of the holiday of Christmas itself, emerged in England in parallel to the German figure of the Weihnachtsmann. In seventeenth-century visual depictions and descriptions, Father Christmas is usually portrayed as an elderly gentleman with a long white beard who somewhat resembles earlier depictions of Saint Nicholas. He is often shown wearing a fur coat.

ABOVE: Illustration from the 1658 edition of Josiah King’s pamphlet The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas, depicting Father Christmas as an elderly gentleman with white hair and a beard wearing a fur coat

The Dutch colonists of New Netherland in the seventeenth century introduced Sint-Nicolaas to what would eventually become New York state, while the later English colonists introduced Father Christmas to the same region. The figure of Santa Claus as we know him today primarily arose in New York state in the early nineteenth century as a blend of Sint-Nicolaas and Father Christmas.

The New York author Washington Irving (lived 1783 – 1859) references Dutch stories about Sint-Nicolaas riding in a wagon over the treetops, bearing presents for all the little girls and boys, in his satirical book A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, published in December 1809 under the pseudonym Dietrich Knickerbocker.

Two poems that were originally published in New York state in the early nineteenth century have been particularly influential on the modern image of Santa Claus. The earlier and more obscure of these poems is “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” which was written by an unknown anonymous author and published in an illustrated edition in 1821. The illustration accompanying the first verse of the poem is the earliest known depiction of Santa Claus riding in sleigh pulled by reindeer (specifically, a reindeer—only one).

The second and more famous of the two poems is “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” or (as it is better known today) “The Night Before Christmas,” which was originally published anonymously in 1823 and is now generally believed to have been written by Clement Clarke Moore (lived 1779 – 1863), a poet and professor of Greek and Oriental literature, Divinity, and Biblical Learning at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City. This poem single-handedly invented and standardized most of the iconography of Santa Claus that is still associated with him today.

ABOVE: Illustration from the frontispiece of Washington Irving’s A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty of the alleged author, Diedrich Knickerbocker

What you may notice about this history is that it leaves very little room for any kind of Norse influence. When we talk about Santa Claus, we’re talking about a figure whose folkloric roots clearly begin with a legendary saint in medieval Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, who first became known as a Christmas gift-bearer in the turbulent era of the Protestant Reformation, and who finally took on the form we recognize today in the United States in the early nineteenth century.

I’ve thought about this long and hard and there are really only two ways that someone could reasonably argue for Óðinn as even a potential source of inspiration for Santa Claus:

• by arguing that the Norsemen from Scandinavia who settled in parts of Britain from the eighth to eleventh centuries CE introduced traditions about Óðinn that somehow seeped into mainstream British folklore, became Christianized, and ultimately exerted indirect, invisible influence on the development of Father Christmas centuries later during the Reformation Era of the sixteenth century

• by arguing that the devoutly Christian children’s poets in New York state in the early nineteenth century who played a major role in inventing the version of Santa Claus who is best known in the English-speaking world today were drawing conscious inspiration from what little information about Norse mythology was available in English at the time in creating their portrayals of Santa

Both of these options are pretty far-fetched, especially since, as I will soon demonstrate, there is no compelling historical evidence for any kind of connection between Óðinn and Santa Claus.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the lands ruled by King Cnut the Great of Denmark in around the year 1028, including large parts of England

Associations with a winter holiday

Arguably the primary basis for the whole supposed connection between Óðinn and Santa Claus is the fact that Óðinn is associated with the Norse holiday of Jól (commonly known as Yule in English) and Santa Claus is associated with the contemporary Christian holiday of Christmas, which is popularly believed to have been heavily influenced by Jól.

There are, however, many serious problems with this supposed connection. The first problem is that, as the New Zealand classicist Peter Gainsford discusses in this blog post he wrote in December 2018, Jól’s supposed influence on Christmas has been greatly exaggerated.

Christmas as it is celebrated today in the Anglophone world has very little in common with what is known about how Jól was celebrated in pre-Christian Germanic cultures. Even the similarities between the two holidays that do exist can be much more parsimoniously explained as the result of similar traditions developing independently in different contexts. Unfortunately, when people start out with the incorrect assumption that Christmas is simply Jól rebranded, they tend to jump to the automatic conclusion that Santa Claus must be Óðinn rebranded.

The second problem with attempts to link Santa Claus with Óðinn through Santa’s association with Christmas and Óðinn’s association with Jól is that, as Jackson Crawford points out in his YouTube video explaining why Óðinn isn’t Santa, their respective associations with these holidays may, in fact, be very different.

Óðinn is primarily associated with Jól through his epithet Jólnir, which means “the Yuler” or “the One Who Yules.” This epithet is attested in the very old skaldic poem Háleygjatal, composed in the late tenth century CE by the skaldic poet Eyvindr Skáldaspillir, in the sixteenth stanza, which reads in Old Norse, in Finnur Jónsson’s edition:

“Jólna sumbl
enn vér gǫ́tum,
stillis lof,
sem steinabrú.”

As Crawford notes in his video, though, there are over eighty different names for Óðinn attested in the surviving Old Norse sources and Jólnir is merely one of these many names. Additionally, although the epithet Jólnir certainly indicates that Óðinn was associated with the holiday of Jól in some way, it does not explain the nature of this association. It certainly does not even remotely suggest in any way that any Norse person during the Middle Ages ever thought that Óðinn might have brought people presents at Jól.

Crawford notes that many Old Norse sources, including the Saga of Hákon the Good, written by the Icelandic antiquarian Snorri Sturluson (lived 1179 – 1241), suggest that Jól was a time when people drank toasts to various deities. He speculates that Óðinn may have simply been the main deity to whom people drank toasts at Jól and that this may be the reason for his association with the holiday.

This brings us to the third and arguably most serious problem with these attempts to link Santa Claus with Óðinn through their respective associations with Christmas and Jól, which is that, as I summarized in the preceding sections, Santa Claus’s present-day association with Christmas is entirely an accident of Reformation history.

Saint Nicholas was originally said to bring gifts on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, which traditionally takes place much earlier in the month of December, on the 5th or 6th day of the month. He only became associated with Christmas starting in the sixteenth century as the result of Protestant reformers trying to discourage people from celebrating the holidays of saints. Any attempt to link Santa Claus to Óðinn on the basis of his association with Christmas is therefore barking up entirely the wrong tree.

ABOVE: Illustration by Otto Fikentscher for Die Gartenlaube from 1880 depicting what the artist imagined a Yule celebration might have looked like, based on almost no historical evidence whatsoever

Iconography of Óðinn and Santa Claus

Leaving the attempts to link Santa Claus with Óðinn through their respective associations with Christmas and Jól aside, the most obvious similarity between the two figures is that both are said to have long beards. In the Old Norse sources, one of Óðinn’s epithets is Langbarðr, which means “Longbeard.” This epithet occurs in, among other places, the anonymous skaldic poem Óðins nöfn 7. Meanwhile, in the modern age, Santa Claus is universally iconic for his long, snow-white beard.

There are, however, two major problems with this supposed parallel. The first is that long beards are extremely common throughout world history, literature, and mythology. If I were to try to list every historical, literary, or mythological figure with a long beard, I would be listing them until Ragnarǫk. Indeed, it is worth mentioning here that Nikolaos of Myra is commonly shown with a long, white beard in Byzantine Roman visual depictions dating to long before his cult was even popularized in western Europe. Santa’s snow-white beard is far more likely to come from Nikolaos of Myra than from Óðinn.

The second problem is that, aside from the fact that they both have long beards, Óðinn and Santa have absolutely nothing in common in terms of their respective iconographies. Óðinn is described in Old Norse sources as a grim old man with one eye and a long, gray beard. We know that Óðinn’s beard is gray because, in some places, including Grímnismál 49 and Óðins nöfn 3, he is given the epithet Hárbarðr, which means “Graybeard.”

He often carries his spear, which is named Gungnir, and he is often accompanied by two ravens named Huginn and Muninn. When he travels among mortals, he is usually described as wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a cloak, which is usually described as either blue or gray.

ABOVE: Illustration of the Norse god Óðinn in the Icelandic manuscript AM 738 (4to, 34v.), dating to c. 1680

Until the nineteenth century, Sint-Nicolaas (who is, if you recall, the Dutch precursor to the American figure of Santa Claus who is most recognizable in the English-speaking world today) was always portrayed as an old man with a long white beard wearing a bishop’s robe and miter, often holding a crozier as well. All of these attributes are clearly derived from the traditional iconography of Saint Nikolaos of Myra.

Meanwhile, until the nineteenth century, Father Christmas, the English precursor to Santa Claus, was usually portrayed as a man with a long white beard, wearing a fur coat of unclear or unspecified color. (Visual representations of him before the nineteenth century were usually woodcuts in black-and-white.)

The oldest surviving visual depictions of the modern folkloric figure of Santa Claus occur in the illustrations that originally accompanied the anonymous illustrated poem “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” which was first published in New York City in 1821 in a paperback book titled The Children’s Friend: A New-Year’s Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve.

The illustration that originally accompanied verse one of the poem portrays “Santeclaus” as a man with a long, brown beard. He is shown sitting in a sleigh pulled by a single reindeer, wearing a red coat and a large, brown fur hat, holding a whip in his right hand to drive the reindeer.

ABOVE: Illustration to the first verse of the poem “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” published in 1821

The illustration that originally accompanied verse two of the poem portrays “Santeclaus” once again with a long, brown beard and a large, brown fur hat. In this illustration, though, instead of a wearing a red coat, he is shown wearing a green coat.

ABOVE: Illustration to the second verse of the poem “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” published in 1821

The best-known description of Santa Claus today comes from the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” which was anonymously published on 23 December 1823 in the Sentinel, a local newspaper for the city of Troy, New York. This poem is better known today by the title “The Night before Christmas,” which comes from the poem’s incipit. Although the authorship of the poem is disputed, Clement Clarke Moore is by far the most likely candidate for the authorship of the poem. The description of Santa Claus in the poem reads as follows:

“He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
a bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
and he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
the stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
and the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;
he had a broad face and a little round belly
that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
a wink of his eye and a twist of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;”

The modern image of Santa Claus was further canonized by the New York-based German American political cartoonist Thomas Nast (lived 1840 – 1902), who produced dozens of illustrations of Santa for the American political magazine Harper’s Weekly over the course of several decades, starting with an initial illustration in 1863.

There is very little in the early descriptions and visual representations of Santa Claus from the nineteenth century to link him with Óðinn, aside from the fact that both figures are said to be old men with long beards. Indeed, if anything, Santa as we know him today has more visually in common with Nikolaos of Myra as he is portrayed in medieval Byzantine Roman representations than with Óðinn, since Santa’s beard is universally described and portrayed as white, much like Nikolaos of Myra’s beard in Byzantine Roman depictions, rather than gray like Óðinn’s beard.

ABOVE: Illustration of Santa Claus by the American cartoonist Thomas Nast, originally printed in the 1 January 1881 edition of Harper’s Weekly

Óðinn and Santa both wearing red?

Another claim that I’ve encountered is that supposedly Óðinn and Santa both wear red coats. The first problem with this claim is that, as Jackson Crawford points out in his video about why Óðinn isn’t Santa Claus, Óðinn is, in fact, never described as wearing red in any Old Norse sources. On the contrary, he is actually most commonly described as wearing a gray or blue cloak. This claim is therefore a complete non-starter from the very beginning.

Furthermore, even if Óðinn really was thought to wear red, the image of Santa Claus wearing a red coat has only become standardized fairly recently. While it is true that the illustration for the first verse of “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” published in 1821, depicts Santa wearing a red coat, the illustration for the second verse shows him wearing a green coat. “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” explicitly describes Santa’s beard as white, but it never specifies the color of his coat. This suggests that, in the early nineteenth century, the exact color of Santa’s coat wasn’t standardized or seen as especially important.

In nineteenth-century depictions, the color of Santa’s coat varies, but it is most commonly shown as either red or green. Although the red coat eventually won out, even in the early twentieth century, Santa was still sometimes portrayed wearing a green coat. For instance, the original cover illustration for the classic children’s novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (the same popular children’s author who wrote the more famous children’s classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), published in the year 1902, depicts Santa climbing into a chimney wearing a green fur coat and hat.

ABOVE: Front cover of the first edition of the popular children’s novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, written by the American children’s writer L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Óðinn’s eight-legged steed Sleipnir and Santa Claus’s sleigh

I’ve seen many people try to claim that Óðinn riding on the back of the flying eight-legged horse Sleipnir is the inspiration for Santa riding in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. I originally rejected this claim as complete nonsense in my article about the history of Santa Claus that I wrote two years ago, since Sleipnir is an eight-legged horse, not a reindeer, and Óðinn is said to ride on Sleipnir’s back, not in a sleigh pulled by him.

I now, however, am aware that the idea of Santa Claus riding in a sleigh pulled by reindeer is an early nineteenth-century American invention. The older Dutch tradition regarding Sint-Nicolaas is actually that he rides around on horseback. This tradition is firmly attested in De oorsprong en uitlegging van dagelyks gebruikte Nederduitsche spreekwoorden, a Dutch dictionary of folk sayings written by Carolus Tuinman and published in the year 1726. The dictionary states (in volume one, on page 162) as translated by the Reddit user Iguana_on_a_stick in this post in r/AskHistorians:

“Klaas Vaak [Dutch name for the sandman] comes riding in the chimney They say this in jest when children get sleepy. It’s a play on the fanciful tale they try to make children believe, that Saint Nicholas on his little horse comes riding through the chimney, to put a little something in their shoes, that they fill with hay and put out on his evening [i.e., December 5th]. But how does he get the name Klaas Vaak? It’s probably because children, in that anticipation, will go to sleep early and willingly. Therefore they also say: Sand’s starting to fall in their eyes, the reason being that this causes the eyes to blink shut.”

Even well into the nineteenth century, Saint Nicholas continued to be frequently represented riding on horseback, as illustrated by the engraving of him on horseback from the year 1850 shown below.

ABOVE: Engraving from 1850 showing Saint Nicholas riding on the back of a horse carrying a basket of toys to reward the good children and a bundle of birch with which to beat the naughty ones

There are, however, still many serious problems with the hypothesis linking Sint-Nicolaas’s horse in Dutch folklore with Sleipnir. The first problem is that the putative connection is mainly based on the assumption that both horses can fly, but the idea that Sleipnir could fly is actually rather poorly attested in the medieval sources. As far as I am aware, there is only one very brief reference to him flying in any surviving source written in Old Norse, which occurs in Snorri Sturluson’s Skáldskaparmál 17.20 in the Prose Edda. The passage reads as follows, as translated by Anthony Faulkes in his translation of the Prose Edda for Everyman (on page 77):

“. . . Odin rode Sleipnir into Giantland and arrived at a giant’s called Hrungnir. Then Hrungnir asked what sort of person this was with the golden helmet riding sky and sea, and said he had a marvellously good horse. Odin said he would wager his head on it that that there would be no horse as good to be found in Giantland.”

Both Peter Gainsford (the same New Zealand classics scholar whom I referenced earlier) and I myself seem to have initially overlooked this passage, but I would like to thank both the anonymous user “Ask Me” on Quora and the anthropologist of religion Joseph A. P. Wilson on Twitter for independently pointing it out to me.

The only other medieval source that can reasonably be interpreted as saying that Sleipnir could fly is the Danish Christian historian Saxo Grammaticus (lived c. 1150 – c. 1220 CE), who wrote exclusively in Latin. In his Gesta Danorum 1.6.9, Saxo gives an account of an old man with one eye, who is clearly implied to be Óðinn, giving a man named Hadding (or Hadingus in Latin) a ride on the back of his horse, which readers can reasonably infer is supposed to be Sleipnir. As Gainsford notes in this post in r/AskHistorians, though, Saxo’s account does not clearly describe Sleipnir as flying. Here is Saxo’s description, as translated by Peter Fisher:

“With these words, [the aged man with one eye] set [Hadding] on his horse and brought him back to the place where he had found him. Hadding hid trembling beneath his cloak, but in intense amazement kept casting keen glances through the slits and saw that the sea lay stretched out under the horse’s hoofs; being forbidden to gaze, he turned his wondering eyes away from the terrible view of his journey.”

It’s easy to see how someone could interpret the line about the sea lying “stretched out under the horse’s hoofs” as a description of the horse flying over the sea. This same line, however, could just as reasonably be interpreted as a description of the horse running on water.

It is clear that the idea that Sleipnir could fly was in circulation among at least some Norse people during the Middle Ages. It is, however, unclear how widespread this idea actually was.

ABOVE: Detail of a depiction of a figure riding an eight-legged horse, probably Óðinn riding Sleipnir, from the Tjängvide image stone, an eighth-century CE stone from Sweden

The second problem is that, even if we charitably assume that Sleipnir and Sint-Nicolaas’s horse were both widely believed to possess the ability to fly, there is still not enough evidence to establish a strong connection between the two. Horses, even flying horses, are extremely common in world mythologies and a flying horse in one culture does not necessarily have anything to do with a flying horse in another culture.

For instance, Pegasos is a winged horse in Greek mythology who is said to have been the son of the god Poseidon and the Gorgon Medousa, born from his mother’s severed neck when the hero Perseus cut off her head. The hero Bellerophontes is said to have slain the monster known as the Chimaira while riding on Pegasos’s back. He is later said to have tried to fly up to Mount Olympos, but Zeus sent a gadfly to sting Pegasos, leading him to buck Bellerophontes off his back.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an Attic red-figure epinetron, dating to between c. 425 and c. 420 BCE, depicting the hero Bellerophontes riding on the back of the winged horse Pegasos to slay the Chimaira

There are also flying horses in the Bible. Notably, John of Patmos describes the armies of Heaven riding on flying white horses in the Book of Revelation 19:11–21. The passage reads as follows, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.’”

“Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly in midheaven, ‘Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and their riders—flesh of all, both free and slave, both small and great.’ Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against the rider on the horse and against his army.”

“And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth; and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.”

Pegasos, the flying white horses in the Book of Revelation, Sleipnir, and Sint-Nicolaas’s horse in Dutch folklore may all be horses that are said to be able to fly, but there’s no further evidence to suggest that they are related. If Sint-Nicolaas’s horse in Dutch folklore were said to have eight legs, this would be a different story, since a horse with eight legs is a mythological trope that, as far as I am aware, is unique to Norse mythology. Sint-Nicolaas’s horse is not said to have eight legs, though, so we don’t really have anywhere to go with this.

ABOVE: Illustration of the rider on the white horse from the Book of Revelation 19, as depicted in the Bamberg Apocalyse (Bamberg Staatsbibliothek Msc.Bibl.140), folio 48 verso, dating to between c. 1000 and c. 1020 CE

The third problem is that the idea that the tradition of Óðinn riding Sleipnir in medieval Norse sources has anything to do with the tradition of Sint-Nicolaas riding a flying horse in eighteenth-century Dutch folklore is highly improbable, given the historical circumstances.

Snorri Sturluson and Saxo Grammaticus were both writing very late, at a time when their respective home countries of Iceland and Denmark had both more-or-less fully converted to Christianity, but there is still a gap in time of over half a millennium between their time in the early thirteenth century and the earliest known attestation of Sint-Nicolaas riding a flying horse in Dutch folklore in the eighteenth century. This enormous gap in time makes a connection seem highly improbable.

Furthermore, although the Norse frequently raided the Netherlands, their presence there was quite limited compared to their presence elsewhere. The Norse settled permanently in mass numbers across large areas of Britain, Ireland, and Normandy in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, but they never settled in the Netherlands in mass numbers in the same way. The Netherlands in the eighteenth century therefore seems like it would be a very, very strange place for a supposedly “pagan” Norse mytheme to turn up.

Thus, given the ambiguity about how widespread the idea that Sleipnir could fly even was in the first place, the lack of any clear evidence to suggest a connection between Sleipnir and Sint-Nicolaas’s horse, and the overall implausibility of the scenario, I think we can conclude that Sleipnir and Sint-Nicolaas’s horse are unrelated.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing areas of Norse raiding and settlement across Europe in the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries CE. Notice the conspicuous lack of Norse settlement in the Netherlands.

I’ve seen some people try to argue that there might be a connection between Sleipnir having eight legs and Santa Claus’s sleigh having eight reindeer. The problem with this argument is that we know exactly where the idea that Santa’s sleigh has eight reindeer originates from and the source has no direct connection to anything Norse.

The earliest attestation of Santa riding in a sleigh pulled by reindeer is the illustration for the first stanza of the poem “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” published in 1821. This illustration, however, depicts “Santeclaus” riding in a sleigh pulled by only a single reindeer, not eight of them.

The earliest attestation of Santa riding in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer specifically comes from the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore, published in the Sentinel in 1823. There are no surviving attestations of anyone thinking Santa rode in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer before the publication of this poem. This means we can be fairly confident that Moore himself is the one who invented the idea of Santa’s sleigh having eight reindeer. As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that Moore had any interest in Norse mythology.

When Moore chose to describe Santa as driving a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer in “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” he most likely just picked the number eight for arbitrary reasons. It’s an even number, meaning Santa can have the same number of reindeer pulling his sleigh on each side. It’s also a number that’s big enough for the number of Santa’s reindeer to seem impressive, but still small enough for it to be reasonable.

It is highly unlikely that Moore was drawing inspiration from any kind of ancient tradition when he picked this number. Even if we charitably assume that Moore was drawing inspiration from some kind of ancient tradition when he chose the number eight for Santa’s reindeer, it is far more likely that he would draw this inspiration from something in the Bible than Norse mythology, since he was, after all, a professor of Divinity and Biblical Learning at an Episcopalian seminary in New York City during the nineteenth century.

Given this context, the eight reindeer who pull Santa’s sleigh in “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” are far more likely to come from something like the eight beatitudes of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew 5:1–12 than the eight legs of Sleipnir in Norse mythology.

It is also worth noting that, even in the years since Moore’s poem was published in 1823, the exact number of Santa’s reindeer still often varies across different depictions. In L. Frank Baum’s novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, published in 1902, Santa has not eight, but ten reindeer, all of whom have different names from the reindeer in Moore’s poem.

In contemporary depictions, Santa is often portrayed with nine reindeer: the eight reindeer from Moore’s poem, plus Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who was invented by Robert L. May, an advertising copywriter for the department store Montgomery Ward, in 1939.

ABOVE: Portrait of Clement Clarke Moore, the author of the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” which is the original source of the idea that Santa’s sleigh is pulled by eight reindeer

The Wild Hunt

I’ve often seen people try to link Óðinn and Santa Claus by bringing up the Wild Hunt. This is a motif in European folklore in which a person who is usually walking alone at night encounters a terrifying ghostly or supernatural hunting party traveling through the sky, usually riding on horseback and accompanied by fierce hunting dogs.

In Germanic stories, the Wild Hunt is often said to take place during Yule, since Yule was seen as a time when the boundaries between worlds became more porous and supernatural and ghostly occurrences were therefore more likely. In modern iterations of the story, the leader of the Wild Hunt is often said to be either Óðinn himself or another figure associated with him.

There are two very serious problems with this argument. The first problem is that the Wild Hunt originally had nothing to do with Óðinn. Indeed, stories about the Wild Hunt are found in many different cultures across Europe, including cultures in which no form of Óðinn was ever worshipped.

ABOVE: Illustration of the Wild Hunt by the German artist Friedrich Wilhelm Heine, published in 1892 as the title page illustration for Wilhelm Wägner’s book Nordisch-germanische Götter und Helden

Although stories about the Wild Hunt are attested from the Middle Ages, in the earliest stories, the leader of the Hunt is either unnamed or the ghost of a famous human king. As Annette Lassen mentions in her book Odin’s Ways: A Guide to the Pagan God in Medieval Literature, published by Routledge in 2022, on page 26, the earliest person known to have associated the Wild Hunt with Óðinn in any way is actually the Swedish humanist scholar Johannes Schefferus (lived 1621 – 1679) in his book Upsalia, published in the year 1666.

In his book, Schefferus connects Óðinn to the Wild Hunt not on the basis of any kind of existing folk traditions, but rather purely on the basis of a spurious etymology for Óðinn’s name. He writes that the name Óðinn “tumultus strepidusque significet” (“means tumult or noise”) and that Óðinn received this name because he was originally the leader of the Wild Hunt. This etymology is, in fact, entirely false.

Despite the spuriousness of his etymology, though, Schefferus’s association of Óðinn with the Wild Hunt became enshrined as scholarly orthodoxy, especially in the nineteenth century through the work of the German folklorist Jacob Grimm (lived 1785 – 1863), who was obsessed with finding connections to pre-Christian Germanic “paganism” in contemporary folklore. The scholarly conviction that the leader of the Wild Hunt was originally Óðinn filtered back into popular portrayals and, from there, into actual folklore.

The Wild Hunt is therefore not an example of an ancient Germanic story about Óðinn that has exerted widespread influence on European folklore, but rather an example of a widespread folkloric motif into which Óðinn has only fairly recently been inserted.

ABOVE: Portrait of the Swedish humanist scholar Johannes Schefferus (lived 1621 – 1679), who was the first person to associate Óðinn with the Wild Hunt

The second problem with the argument is that, not only is Óðinn’s own association with the Wild Hunt a relatively recent invention, there is also no evidence to connect the Wild Hunt with Santa Claus. I suppose that someone could argue that stories about the Wild Hunt and Santa Claus are similar because both involve mounted figures traveling through the sky during a holiday in midwinter. This is all that the two really have in common, though, and the similarity is too vague to establish a firm connection.

The Wild Hunt is supposed to be a frightening supernatural hunting party, while Santa Claus is supposed to be a friendly gift-giver who rides through the sky to bring gifts to small children. The Wild Hunt arguably has more in common with malevolent witches who are said to fly through the night sky on broomsticks than with Santa Claus.

ABOVE: Vintage illustration of Santa Claus riding in his sleigh

Óðinn, Santa, and gift-giving

I’ve often seen people claim that Óðinn was said to give gifts to humans, much like Santa Claus. This claim is only half true at best and, in fact, the sense in which it is true is actually a startling illustration of just how different Óðinn and Santa really are.

As Hilda R. Davis points out in her paper “Scandinavian Folklore in Britain,” published in 1970 in the Journal of the Folklore Institute, volume 7, issue number 2/3, pages 177-186, Óðinn is a warrior god. The only gifts he is said to give humans in the Old Norse sources are weapons and equipment for battle and he only gives these gifts to adult male warriors. He is never described in any medieval Norse source as giving benevolent gifts to children out of kindness and generosity.

As Jackson Crawford further elaborates in his YouTube video about Óðinn and his personality, one of Óðinn’s primary goals throughout Norse mythology is to cause as many brave men to die violent deaths as possible so that he will be able to harvest them and send them to Valhǫll, which means “Hall of the Slain,” where they will train perpetually to fight in Óðinn’s army on the day of Ragnarǫk. Thus, when Óðinn gives someone a weapon as a gift, it is usually for the purpose of getting as many men to die violent deaths as possible.

For instance, in the Saga of the Vǫlsungs, Óðinn gives a magic sword that can cut through rock to the hero Sigmundr. Sigmundr uses this sword to kill many of his enemies, but, when Sigmundr grows older, Óðinn decides that it is time to harvest him for Valhǫll. Thus, one day, as Sigmundr is heading into battle, he sees an old man with one eye dressed in gray wearing a wide-brimmed hat, carrying a spear. This man is, of course, Óðinn himself. Sigmundr swings the sword given to him by Óðinn against Óðinn’s spear, but the sword shatters against the spear, leaving Sigmundr disarmed. Sigmundr subsequently dies in battle, fulfilling the will of Óðinn.

Obviously, this is a very different kind of gift-giving from the kind, charitable gift-giving we normally associate with Santa Claus. The tradition of Santa Claus as a secret gift-giver clearly has nothing to do with Óðinn or any other figure in Norse mythology and instead derives from the Christian Byzantine Roman legends of Nikolaos of Myra as a secret, charitable gift-giver.

As I mentioned earlier, Michael the Archimandrite’s hagiography of Nikolaos, written in the ninth century CE, already attests the legend of Nikolaos, out of charity, secretly giving sacks of gold to a poor man under cover of darkness to pay for his daughters’ dowries. That makes this legend about Nikolaos just as old as the very oldest surviving Old Norse sources that even mention Óðinn.

ABOVE: Illustration in the eighteenth-century illustrated Icelandic manuscript SÁM 66 depicting Óðinn holding a big sword

Associations with the far north

One real similarity between Óðinn and Santa Claus is that they are both associated with the far north. Their connections to the north, however, are very different and, as far as the currently available evidence suggests, distinct in origin. Óðinn is associated with the far north because the original homeland of the Norse people who worshipped him was Scandinavia.

By contrast, Santa Claus is associated with the far north because he is said to live at the North Pole. The idea that Santa lives at the North Pole, however, is the wholesale invention of Thomas Nast, who produced an influential illustration of Santa living at the North Pole that was published in the 29 December 1866 edition of Harper’s Weekly.

Thomas Nast most likely chose to portray Santa living at the North Pole because, at the time, there had been several well-publicized attempts to reach the North Pole, but none of these attempts had succeeded. The North Pole was therefore widely seen as a mysterious, unreachable place—a place ideally suited for a mysterious folkloric being like Santa Claus to reside. It is highly unlikely that Nast had anything even remotely related to Óðinn or Norse mythology in mind when he made up Santa living at the North Pole.

ABOVE: Photograph of the American cartoonist Thomas Nast, taken by Napoleon Sarony in Union Square sometime between c. 1860 and c. 1890

Santa’s only real connections to Norse “paganism”: Donner and elves

There are only two aspects of Santa Claus as we know him today that I think can reasonably be traced back to Germanic “paganism” in any sense. The first of these aspects is the name of the reindeer Donner. This name is the Modern High German word meaning “thunder,” which is etymologically derived from the Proto-Germanic root *þunraz, meaning “thunder,” which is also the source of the English word thunder and, as it happens, the name of the Norse god Þórr.

The problem with using the name of the reindeer Donner to argue that Santa has been significantly influenced by Óðinn is that this name is a relatively recent invention of known origin. The names of all Santa’s reindeer (except Rudolph) were invented by Clement Clarke Moore for his poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” or “The Night Before Christmas,” originally published in 1823. It is highly unlikely that Moore got any of the names from preexisting folklore, since none of them are attested anywhere in any sources that date to before the publication of his poem.

As it happens, Moore originally named the reindeer in question Dunder, which was the word for “thunder” in colloquial New York Dutch at the time. Moore most likely chose this name simply because he knew it meant “thunder” and he thought it would make a good name for a flying reindeer. It is very unlikely that he was thinking of Þórr at the time he picked the name.

ABOVE: Christmas card from the 1880s depicting Santa Claus riding in his sleigh, pulled by eight reindeer

Santa’s other genuine connection to Germanic “paganism” are his elves. The Modern English word elf is etymologically derived from the Old English word ælf, which originally referred to beings from Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology specifically, elves are sometimes associated with Óðinn. For instance, according to Snorri Sturluson’s Skáldskaparmál in the Prose Edda, Óðinn’s spear Gungnir was made by a pair of dwarves, who are often conflated with elves.

Once again, though, the problem with using Santa Claus’s association with elves as evidence that he has been significantly influenced by Óðinn is that this association is a very recent invention. The earliest reference to Santa Claus in association with elves that I have been able to find is, once again, Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” or “The Night Before Christmas,” originally published in 1823. Moore’s poem does not say anything about Santa having elves who work for him, but instead calls Santa himself “a right jolly old elf.”

The idea that Santa has a workshop of elves who work for him seems to have first emerged in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century, several decades after the publication of Moore’s poem. On 26 December 1857, Harper’s Weekly published a poem titled “The Wonders of Santa Claus,” the second stanza of the first chapter of which reads as follows:

“In his house upon the top of a hill,
And almost out of sight,
He keeps a great many elves at work,
All working with all their might,
To make a million of pretty things,
Cakes, sugar-plums, and toys,
To fill the stockings, hung up you know
By the little girls and boys.”

The 1873 Christmas Issue of the American women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book bore an illustration on the front cover showing Santa seated in a workshop surrounded by many tiny elves hard at work making toys.

Thus, Santa is genuinely connected to Norse mythology through the name of his reindeer Donner and his association with elves, but these connections are not products of any kind of ancient folk tradition going all the way back to the “pagan” Norse; instead, they are purely inventions of literate Christian romanticists who lived in the United States in the nineteenth century.

ABOVE: Cover illustration from Godey’s Lady’s Book showing Santa surrounded by elves manufacturing toys for Christmas

Conclusion

There is no evidence that Óðinn has had any kind of detectable influence on Santa Claus and, in fact, the two figures have extremely little in common. The legitimate similarities between Óðinn and Santa Claus can essentially be boiled down to these:

• Both figures are portrayed as old men with long beards. (Never mind the fact that plenty of unrelated figures in mythology and legend, including, most notably, Nikolaos of Myra, are also portrayed as old men with long beards.)

• Both figures are associated in some way with some kind of winter holiday. (Never mind the fact that they are associated with different holidays and their associations with their respective holidays may be completely different in nature.)

• Both figures have some kind of mount that they use to travel. (Never mind the fact that Óðinn’s mount is the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, while Santa’s mount is a sleigh pulled by reindeer, the number of which varies.)

• Both figures are sometimes said to give things to people. (Never mind the fact that Óðinn gives deadly weapons to adult men so that they will kill each other and make more dead warriors for Valhǫll, while Santa Claus gives presents to children to reward them for being nice.)

• Both figures have some kind of association with places in the far north. (Never mind the fact that Óðinn is associated with Scandinavia, while Santa is associated with the North Pole, or the fact that Santa’s association with the North Pole is the invention of Thomas Nast in the United States in the nineteenth century.)

• Both figures are associated in some way with a being that has a name that is derived from the Proto-Germanic root *þunraz, meaning “thunder.” (Never mind the fact that, in Norse mythology, Þórr is Óðinn’s son, the god of thunder, while, in contemporary folklore, Donner is one of Santa’s eight reindeer, or the fact that the reindeer Donner is the invention of Clement Clarke Moore in the United States in the early nineteenth century.)

• Both figures are sometimes associated with elves. (Never mind the fact that Santa’s elves are very different from the elves in Norse mythology and his association with elves is, again, first attested in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.)

These “parallels” (if we can even legitimately call them that) are extremely vague by any standard. If you want to argue that Óðinn has had any significant influence on Santa Claus, you’re going to need to do a Hel of a lot better than this.