Sad news. People in Sweden have built a straw goat, which has burnt to the ground. Poor goat.
Well, let me expand a little – the 43-foot straw goat, a “traditional Scandinavian Yuletide symbol” was erected this Christmas in Gavle (just north of Stockholm) as it has been every year since 1966.
Though also every year (well almost – only 10 times since goat number one has this not happened), the goat is vandalised in some way, usually by being set alight and burning to the ground.
And this has happened to poor Mr Swedish Goat yet again, as he went up in flames early this morning.
Now, initially I sat here sniggering – oh, those Swedes! Building straw goats! And then always burning them! But then…I found out that the straw goat has his own blog. Gavlebockens (snappy name! Ahem, though it just means “Gavle’s Goat”) posted regularly (in both Swedish and English – a bilingual straw goat, you can’t get more impressive than that), even finding time to post whilst he was going up in flames. This appeared this morning:
Terrible night! Slept so well under my beautiful snow blanket, when it suddenly became awfully hot. It was fire!!! At 3 AM, someone managed to set me on fire and destroy the amazing Christmas spirit in Gävle. So sad that I can’t celebrate Christmas with you all, but thank you so much for now, dear friends. I’m sad to sad to say that I must go now. I’m going on holiday now to get some rest – but will of course be back for next Christmas. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
You know I’m now sitting here sobbing my eyes out over this poor, straw, not-even-real goat. (Hey, I’m a girl, I cry at anything.) *sniffle* He didn’t even get to see Christmas…
You rotters! Who sets upon a poor, defenceless straw goat? Anyone touches ol’ Gavlebockens next year, they’ll have me to answer to.
- BBC News: Swedish Christmas straw goat burnt
P.S. Ohmagawd, there’s something about Gavlebockens having a baby brother that was vandalised and never came back, and he was said, and…*waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh*…
P.P.S. Oh wait, then there’s another post about him watching Swedish Idol. Urgh.