A snowwoman of the Skogvik valley stands five and a half feet tall, in three stacked snowballs, and weighs about six hundred pounds, which I know because the Aas brothers weighed one on the grain scale in return for a mug of cocoa. She is round and rosy at the cheeks and bright everywhere else. The one at the Lund farm wears a red knitted hat with a white pompom, a thick green-and-white striped scarf and a garland of evergreen and red berries around her middle, with a carrot nose, shining button eyes and a smile of small coal pebbles. She is made new every December, on the first Saturday after the first snow, by whichever child reaches the gate first.
The oldest account in the valley dates her kind to the winter of 1846, when a girl named Greta Lund built a snowwoman at the farm gate and, having no hat to spare for herself, gave her a red knitted one. By morning the snowwoman had raised an arm. The second step is a custom. By 1880 every farm on the road to Odden had a figure at its door, and households had begun leaving a cup of hot cocoa on the step at dusk. The third step is recent, and it is why I came: since the 1990s the figures have taken to holding a wreath and waving at every sled that goes down the lane.
Their usefulness is plain. A snowwoman keeps her step clear of drifts, provided she is fed. The cocoa is found cooled in the morning, its surface skinned over and marked with a small fresh dent that the Aas brothers say is from a twig finger. Greta, now eighty-eight, says that every snow figure in the valley knows the others' names and that they exchange greetings at midnight. I cannot check this, having never managed to stay awake in the cold past eleven. There is a household remedy for a droop. If a figure leans or loses her smile, a lantern is set at her feet for one night, and by morning she has straightened. No one in Skogvik will put salt near a snow figure, and a child who does is sent to apologize with a carrot.
I left on the first of January by the road to Odden. There were fourteen snow figures along it, one at each farm gate, and every one of them was facing the road, with a hand raised.
- Classification
- Animate snow figure
- Habitat
- Dooryards, orchards, village edges
- Danger
- Minimal
- Size
- 5 to 6 ft, three stacked spheres
- Activity
- Seasonal
- Realm
- Snowy farmhouse dooryards
- Binomial
- Nivopilus custos
- Diet
- Fresh snow, hot cocoa steam, carrots
- Temperament
- Cheerful, welcoming, tidy