Year 1974 featured the second Finnish Christmas postage stamp issue, and rightfully the stamps decipted christmas elves. In nordic mythology christmas elves, or as finns call them tonttu’s, have a long tradition.

1974 Finland - Christmas postage stamp

The origin of word tonttu comes from Swedish word tomte with roots back to ancient times. They were caretakers of a farmer’s home, particulary children or home animals all around the year. If you treated them, they did the same for you. But the wrath of tonttu was something many feared.

The 1890’s illustrations of Jenny Nyström turned this mythical character into white-bearded, red-capped friendly figure associated with Christmas. Initially they had nothing to do with Santa / Joulupukki, but as the American version of Santa and christmas elves became more popular, the mythology surrounding the tonttu’s evolved.

Nowadays they are santa’s little helper’s who keep track of children and take care of the animals of the forest. Usually tonttu’s move in pairs of two.

This article is filed under Philatelic tidbits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.