Yule Lad #8 Skyrgamur

December 19th

Skyrgámur – Skyr Gobbler

Skyr Gobbler makes his way down from the mountains on the 19th. He is obsessed with skyr, an Icelandic dairy product similar to yogurt. He sneaks into the pantries and eat all the skyr he can get. 

I smelled a rat on this one. This sounds like the dairy industry hijacked an old legend to push their product. After all The Yule Lads have been around for centuries. I’ve read there was an 18th century ban on parents telling the children about The Yule Lads as back then they were too scary.  I  looked up Skyr and found this at http://www.skyr.com : 

‘Skyr is a strained yogurt that has been a staple of the Icelandic diet since the Vikings settled more than 1,100 years ago. Skyr is even mentioned in some of the Sagas, the famed stories about the Vikings and early Icelandic history and settlement. Skyr today is almost only made with cow’s milk but was originally made from both the milk of sheep and cow.’

 

Well I’ be damned. 

I’ve entered the ‘overwhelmed’ phase of Christmas where my mind is spinning at all I want to do and needs doing.  It’s the most wonderful time of the year – not!  Not when there is so much to do – or I want to do.  Whenever I feel overwhelmed I stop to recognize it and take a few deep breaths in and recognize I am trying to think and do too many things at once and my hummingbird brain isn’t have it. It is sending out the emotion of feeling of being overwhelmed as a warning to cut it out.   I pause to get all out of my pumpkins and onto a list. This gives a little distance to the matters and my memory does’t have to keep reminding me as it is ‘down’.  Then I slowly go through the list and discard some things being at peace I cannot do it all and perhaps it is good not to. I will stick with the things that ‘have to be done’ (grocery shopping and finishing shopping for Someone) and leave the things I would like to do (bake cookies, read blogs, set up outside lights).   It is just not humanely possible to do a full time job, manage a house, and do Christmas all at the same time.