Mumming in Effigie around St. Canute’s day in Southern Sweden.
An Example of the Popular Exercise of Justice
The study concerns the custom of carrying stuffed humansized straw dummies around at the end of Christmas, the day before St Canute’s Day (7 January) or the day before St Felix’s Day (8 January) (see map p. 132).
Under cover of darkness, the hideous effigy representing an old man or an old woman was stealthily placed outside the door of a farm in the neighbourhood, usually furnished with a letter urging the person who was given the effigy to pass it on. These dummies and their accompanying letters gave people an outlet both for their need to joke and for their desire for revenge. The letter referred to offences committed in the past year, especially transgressions of a sexual kind. The male effigies were made with a clearly marked sexual organ. An example is recorded in the court records from Varberg for 1934, when four boys were summoned for having accused a woman of extremely immoral deeds. Their sentence was lenient, however, with reference to the fact that it was an old custom in the district.
Like Carsten Bregenhøj, the author interprets the custom as a social institution, but also as a popular exercise of justice. There are direct parallels with publicly sanctioned executions in effigy, and the builders’ custom of hanging up a mocking dummy of a man who failed to provide refreshments when a roof truss had been raised for him. It was only when the custom of sending straw dummies around no longer functioned as a form of popular exercise of justice, because of the weakened social networks, that people turned to the state judicial authorities. This led to the extinction of the custom during the twentieth century.
