You could say that the Yule Lads are the Santa Clauses of Iceland. There are 13 of them and in the 13 days leading to Christmas, they bring gifts to children. Children place one of their shoes on the windowsill and if they were good the day before, the Yule Lads will bring candy and small gifts, but if the child was naughty, they will leave a rotten potato in their shoe. Each of the Yule Lads has a particular personality, similarly to the seven dwarfs, and they all have some mischief they like to make, for example, slamming doors at night or stealing leftovers from pots. They don’t seem that harmful, but apparently they were a lot creepier back in the day. So much so that in 1746, parents were officially banned from telling stories about the Yule Lads to their children because the stories would really haunt them.