ought to have been burnt in them: "Again, in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark huge bonfires are kindled on hills and eminences on Mid-summer Eve. It does not appear, indeed, that any effigy is burned in these bonfires; but the burning of an effigy is a feature which might easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten."
I had been informed by Professor Martin Hægstad of the University of Kristiania that in some Norwegian compositions, written by the pupils of our "teacher-schools," he had seen something about some figures burnt in the bonfires of St. John's Eve, which may perhaps be the sought-for effigies. But I was unable to procure more definite information, until in the summer of 1918 in Bergen I happened to discover a little more about it.
What Professor Haegstad told me was as follows:
In Nordfjord and Nordhordland the young people on St. John's Eve raise a big pole or an oar with cross-arms and wreathed with juniper. This figure is called "Jonsokkallen," i.e. the John's Eve man, Jonsok being derived from John's vaka (i.e. St. John's vigil), and kall being equivalent to Anglo-Saxon ceorl, old-Norwegian karl, a man. Now it is interesting to note that the word "kall" is often employed in compound words expressing the identity of some ancient heathen god, e.g. the Lappish Horagalles, i.e. Thore-kall, as they still speak in Sweden of the old Scandinavian god Thor. Further, we find the word in "ovnskallen," i.e. the oven-kall, the carved piece of wood that was placed near the oven in our old "smoke buildings," i.e. the primitive buildings where the smoke escaped through a square opening in the roof. The word "kall" is also found in a series of terminations employed of different supernatural beings, especially in the agricultural world, as skurakallen, i.e. the corn-harvest-kall; slaatlakallen, i.e. the hay-kall, etc. And we are also able to find the word in the names of some mountains, as "the Vaagakallen" in Lofoten, representing no doubt some supernatural being, as all passers-by have to take off their caps when they for the first time pass the mountain. So I feel entitled to conclude that the "Jonsokkall" is a reminiscence of a supernatural being, a deity, that was in remote ages burnt
