I remember The Tomten from my own childhood, so I was happy to see it in the library.Checking out the book for Julia wasn't my very best parenting idea. Even though she loves gnomes (having seen numerous specimens at her Grammy's apartment), she had an unequivocally negative reaction to the book when she looked at it by herself one day: "I do not like this book. No, no, no. I do not like it." Close, put back on shelf, never open again.
And but so, the tomte book has a long history that runs all the way back to the 1880s, when two Swedes - a poet and a painter - collaborated to adapt folk stories about pastoral gnomes to a midwinter Christmas setting. (Of course, the Finns have their own equivalent, the tonttu or haltija. I'm sure he's the most taciturn of the bunch.)