Gävlebocken 2025 - Tufty, Yet Birdless

November 30, 2024 2:56 AM

As the seasons turn and winter once again dusts Scandinavia with her snowy kiss, from the security of its bunker comes the shambling, tufty beast that is the Gävlebocken (Live Feed). Firm favourite of arsonists and jackdaws alike, will the Goat make it through to New Year, or will it be be set ablaze, pecked apart, or subject to even more esoteric destruction?

Quite possibly the world's most flammable tourist trap, the Gävle Goat (Wikipedia) has delighted visitors and locals in the otherwise unremarkable industrial town of Gävle since 1966, where it was erected as a cynical ploy to draw tourists.

And draw them it did, mostly ones who wanted to set fire to it. Each year the Goat is caught in a primal battle between those who gallantly defend it as a jolly festive tradition, and a motley crew of vandals dead keen on burninating the whole damn thing down in what they too, broadly, consider a jolly festive tradition with a decidedly more pagan bent.

Sometimes the Goat gets run over by traffic. Sometimes torched. Notably, in 2005 an archer dressed as a gingerbread man shot it with a flaming arrow, Santa at his side. Last year to the surprise of basically everyone, the Goat was pecked apart at a leisurely pace by birds. Despite repeated attempts at chemical fireproofing, web cams, and other attempts to secure the beast (Archive), the Goat only survives roughly one year in three, depending on how you account for the birds.

Joyfully, it's been under a webcam since 1996, so you can watch many of these fine occurrences for yourself! Burned down, 2012. Blown up and burned down, 2015. Hit by a car, 2016. Burned down, 2021. The Birdening, 2023.

If the Goat does make it through to the new year, it's packed down in storage, victorious, to try again the following year, a bit like a winning conker. Deconstruction of the Goat, 2018.

Short sharp Youtube primer. Amazing Places 3min video. Twenty minute doco from the Graudiuan. Daily Goat Updates via Instagram.

Previously on Metafilter. Previouser. Previouslerler. More Previouslier. And so on. And so on.

posted by Jilder (27 comments total)

Next to Whamageddon, the Gävlebocken is my favorite Christmas-related survival event!
posted by bigendian at 3:51 AM on November 30, 2024 [8 favorites]

Honestly, I am on the side of the goat burners, not because I have anything against the goat itself but because I am all for these fiery pagan traditions in the armpit of the year to remind the sun to come up again.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 4:34 AM on November 30, 2024 [6 favorites]

I am workshopping a "winter warmer" drawing to go on a hot toddy recipe card for a white elephant gift. I was thinking sleepytime bear sat by a festive dumpster fire, but this reminds me that I should perhaps incorporate a yule goat. Hmm, back to the drawing board....
posted by the primroses were over at 5:15 AM on November 30, 2024 [3 favorites]

The goat needs to burn, and it will burn.
posted by Termite at 5:22 AM on November 30, 2024 [3 favorites]

The true burning will be the Rage of the Great Goat, when, at the end of all things, the Goat will arise from its many graves, eat the sun, and set fire to everything on Earth. Shoot that with your arrow, Gungerbread Man!
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:26 AM on November 30, 2024 [6 favorites]

Arsonists in Sweden today are too busy trying to burn down buildings at Skansen. (It was a glassblowing accident and the building is mostly fine, I was just there and can confirm.)
posted by St. Oops at 6:08 AM on November 30, 2024 [2 favorites]

So Burning Man, but less man, and more goat. Intrigued.
posted by otherchaz at 7:26 AM on November 30, 2024 [2 favorites]

I asked Firefox to translate the article that St. Oops linked, and it has translated the Swedish term for molten glass (glasmassa) as "glass pulp", which I really like. Scooping the pulp out of the furnace!
posted by moonmilk at 7:51 AM on November 30, 2024 [2 favorites]

https://gavlegoat.com/ (Chinese merch site) now will notify you when the goat burns.

This year I bought the Gavle Goat gets helicoptered sweater.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:35 AM on November 30, 2024 [1 favorite]

We have to burn the goat. If it survives long enough, myth and legend (That I just made up) says that the goat will "bestryde the Erth, eatyng and pyllagyng, like a hyrd of goat-locusts*, with the scooping of entrayls and the tossyng of other entrayls, and the sqyshyng and mashyng and what-not, generally. makyng a noosance of ytself as goat wyll do (but meanyng well, as goats also do) "

So, yeah. That. Burn it.

*literally, hvrgnbrgnvrgngrgn - this word was before Nordic people discovered vowels (and brevity), and whoa, brother, did they go nuts when that happened. Umlauts, KWIM? Also, they were death on the letter "I" for a bit. And, briefly, sobriety. It's like they weren't Nordic at all, but maybe their southern neighbors, The Goths, before they discovered makeup and Sisters of Mary, who snuck passages in when the Nords weren't looking.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 8:37 AM on November 30, 2024 [5 favorites]

We want the goat to burn* @hasgavlebockenburneddownyet
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:03 AM on November 30, 2024

Sweden, we’re counting on you, don’t let us down.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 11:47 AM on November 30, 2024

It just dawned on me that when that goat burns it probably stinks.

So, burn the stinky goat.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:22 PM on November 30, 2024

Oooohhhh...this is cultural appropriation I can really celebrate. Can I make a squealing little car* out of straw and blow it up in the walmart parking lot, honoring...something? Asking for myself and nobody else, get your own arsonist tradition.

*because the younguns with the squealing little cars around here like to race around the walmart parking lot in the wee hours. I don't want to actually hurt any of those real people, but I don't mind sending a grumpy old person message regarding squealing mufflers at 3am.
posted by winesong at 1:02 PM on November 30, 2024 [1 favorite]

Those videos are crazy.

You have to be true to the bit, (or maybe really drunk, (or maybe mechanical failure :shrug:)), to take you car into that. It there a fence? All I can see are poles, and assume there is a fence attached, but the one where it gets blown up, dudes got in there pretty quick. And it blowed up real good.

As Iron Goat is my Kung-Fu fighting school, I'm always rooting for the goat.

And did the birds actually bring it down? That was a LOT of birds.
posted by Windopaene at 2:48 PM on November 30, 2024 [2 favorites]

The birds stripped every scrap of straw from the goat. All that was left was the frame. It was astonishing to watch. As you can no doubt guess, I am an avid goat-watcher (and pro arsonist) from way back, and so would check in on the Goat every morning, and it was wild just how much straw they removed. It was literally tonnes. They'd peck it off the goat over the day and the winter winds would carry it off. It was a skeleton by the end of the year.

For goat destructionists, it was a win, but for the pro goat wing, it was considered survival as the frame was up. I personally think we owe it to the sheer effort of the jackdaws involved to categorise it as a destruction.

I am pro burnination. The last bulwark against the tides of bowdlerisation and commercialisation, the sacrifice of the goat to Sol Ivictus must be made in order to burn off the spiritual cruft of the year. If the goat survives, we do a symbolic burning of some sort in order to honour the goat - I wrote about it on my tumblr here but left it out of the post as a self link. Last year we made the goat out of bread and ate it. The year before that I crocheted one out of raffia and burned it.

I haven't decided on how I'm going to do the goat this year. It'll need some size, though, to really get through the garbage of the year.
posted by Jilder at 4:42 PM on November 30, 2024 [7 favorites]

Burn the goat? You are awful people to suggest that. I followed him on Twitter one year (he survived) and he was such a jaunty fellow. You would not say such terrible things if you knew him. Love live the goat!
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:30 PM on November 30, 2024 [2 favorites]

I'm truly conflicted on whether or not I want it to burn.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:06 PM on November 30, 2024

Burn goaty burn, caprine inferno.
posted by otherchaz at 10:13 PM on November 30, 2024 [2 favorites]

I love him completely, TWinbrook8. You don't make a sacrifice of something you don't love. It's not much of a sacrifice otherwise.
posted by Jilder at 10:58 PM on November 30, 2024 [2 favorites]

It feels like the combination of heavy surveillance + actual consequences for the arsonists is successfully deterring the attempts to destroy the goat. Sitting in California, having learned of the goat saga a decade ago, I think that's super sad! But honestly, if it were my home town's holiday display being subjected to regular arson attempts, I might feel differently. (It did feel cosmically satisfying to learn that the birds took it last year when the fire could not.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:26 AM on December 2, 2024

It's a tourist attraction: you lose the tourists once someone burns it again on December 5, or whatever.

Given what I read in the past as to how ridiculous they used to be with regards to trying to protect the goat (we don't like how flame retardant makes him brown, we want a scenic fence, once we run out of money to pay guards, that's when it happens), I sometimes seriously wonder if subconsciously the Swedes want it to burn.

I wrote a 10 minute play about the Gavle Goat. It sadly wasn't accepted anyone I submitted it this year, I'm attempting to get friends to do a reading of it online, but we'll see if it happens.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:34 AM on December 2, 2024 [2 favorites]

Honestly I only know about the city of Gavle due to the burning goat. It's a very effective tourist attraction because of the arson.
posted by Jilder at 1:57 AM on December 3, 2024 [3 favorites]

Just checked out the livestream... and am I correct in assuming the security buildings are pixelated to prevent arsonist case-ing the goat to look for flaws in the security?
posted by midmarch snowman at 3:45 PM on December 13, 2024

Nah, it's an EU privacy thing as far as I'm aware. They're obliged to get a release from people in broadcast and that's not possible in this case, so it's just easier to blur. Any security stuff is just a bonus.
posted by Jilder at 5:23 PM on December 14, 2024

Here is my Gavle Goat 10 minute play.
Play is based off of both real life and this NY Mag interview.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:07 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]

That was fun jenfullmoon, thanks for sharing!
posted by the primroses were over at 6:42 PM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]