Yule
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50 free Yule trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Yule is older than Christmas and still hiding inside it. The word once named a midwinter season of feasting, drinking and oath-swearing among the Germanic peoples of northern Europe, and it survives today in the Scandinavian word jul, in the Yule log and Yuletide of English carols, and in the calendars of modern pagans who keep the festival at the winter solstice. This quiz covers the whole story. There are questions on the Viking-age feast and the gods and sagas tied to it, on logs, goats and other customs that outlived the old religion, on the trolls, pranksters and monsters of Icelandic folklore, on the food and drink of a Nordic Christmas table, and on Yule in modern paganism, novels, film and television. It is written for holiday quiz nights, classrooms, covens and anyone curious about where Christmas customs come from. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the full set can be played online or printed.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The giant Yule goat that arsonists have burned most years in Gävle, Sweden, is built from which material?
Straw
Straw makes the goat easy prey: it has been burned to the ground most years since 1966, despite guards and a fire station close by.
Q 02In Iceland, the thirteen Yule Lads leave what in the shoes of children who have misbehaved?
A rotten potato
A rotten potato waits for disobedient children, while good ones find a small gift in the shoe they leave on the windowsill each night.
Q 03In Norse myth, the god Baldr is killed by a weapon made from which evergreen plant, now a Yuletide decoration?
Mistletoe
Mistletoe was the one thing Frigg never asked to spare her son, so Loki guided the blind god Höðr into firing the fatal shot.
Q 04In which Harry Potter novel does Hogwarts hold the Yule Ball as part of the Triwizard Tournament?
Goblet of Fire
Goblet of Fire, the fourth in the series, sends Harry to the dance with Parvati Patil after Cho Chang turns him down for Cedric Diggory.
Q 05In Icelandic folklore, the giant Yule Cat eats people who fail to receive what before Christmas Eve?
New clothes
New clothes were the reward for farm workers who finished processing the autumn wool in time, so the monster served as a threat to slackers.
Q 06The Yule log cake, a sponge roulade iced to look like bark, probably originated in which country?
France
France gave the cake its name, bûche de Noël, in the 19th century, and bakers still drag a fork through the icing to copy a real log's surface.
Q 07Which Norse god, who traded an eye for wisdom, was also known as Jólnir, a name meaning 'Yule man'?
Odin
Odin took the name from jól, the Old Norse word for the midwinter feast, although one medieval chronicle claimed the feast was named after him.
Q 08Which US city's station WPIX created The Yule Log, a looped film of a fireplace shown each Christmas?
New York
New York got the film as a present for apartment dwellers with no hearth of their own, and the original was shot at Gracie Mansion, the mayor's residence.
Q 09Which gift do Icelanders exchange so widely on Christmas Eve that the season is nicknamed a Yule flood?
Books
Books became the default present in the 1940s, when wartime import limits were looser on paper than on other gift goods, and new titles are still released in a rush before Christmas.
Q 10The Yuletide toast 'wassail' comes from an old greeting that wished the listener what?
Good health
Good health was the wish, from Old Norse ves heill, and by about 1300 the word also meant the spiced drink passed round in a shared bowl.
Q 11Which Arthurian knight accepts a beheading challenge from a green stranger who rides into Camelot at midwinter?
Gawain
Gawain strikes off the Green Knight's head, only to watch him pick it up, remind Gawain to take the return blow in a year and a day, and ride away.
Q 12Which Roman midwinter festival, like the Germanic Yule, was marked by feasting, gifts and masters serving their slaves?
Saturnalia
Saturnalia opened on 17 December with a sacrifice and a public banquet, and for a few days gambling was allowed and social rank was turned upside down.
Q 13Which saint's feast, twelve days before Christmas, sees Scandinavian girls in white gowns wear crowns of lights?
Lucy
Saint Lucy has a name meaning light, and under the old Julian calendar her feast fell on the longest night of the year.
Q 21Which ogress of Icelandic folklore, whose sons are the thirteen Yule Lads, cooks naughty children in a large pot?
Grýla
Grýla shares her mountain cave with a lazy husband, Leppalúði, and appeared in tales as a troll long before she was tied to Christmas.
Q 22Up Helly Aa, a fire festival that ends the Yule season by burning a replica Viking galley, is held in which islands?
Shetland
Shetland stages its biggest procession in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of January, when up to a thousand costumed guizers march with torches.
Q 23Which country's parliament abolished the 'Yule vacation' in 1640, and made Christmas Day a public holiday only in 1958?
Scotland
Scotland's ministers were reported to make their households spin and plough in plain sight on Yule day, to show contempt for the feast.
Q 14In Scandinavia, a prize goes to whoever finds what hidden in the rice pudding served at Yule?
An almond
An almond is stirred in whole, and in Denmark the lucky finder wins the mandelgave, usually a pink marzipan pig.
Q 15What is glögg, the drink served hot at Christmas markets and Yule parties across the Nordic countries?
Mulled wine
Mulled wine goes by glögg in Swedish and gløgg in Norwegian and Danish, and alcohol-free versions made with fruit juice are sold ready-made.
Q 16Which Disney character is named in the Swedish title of a cartoon special shown there every Christmas Eve since 1960?
Donald Duck
Donald Duck is so much more popular than Mickey in Sweden that the show was retitled after him, and Swedes simply call it Kalle Anka.
Q 17Which Nordic Yule dish is made by soaking dried whitefish in lye until it turns gelatinous?
Lutefisk
Lutefisk is usually made from cod, has to be rehydrated for days before eating, and is a fixture of the Norwegian julebord Christmas table.
Q 18In which country is Santa Claus called Joulupukki, a name that literally means 'Yule goat'?
Finland
Finland kept the old name after a red-suited gift-bringer replaced the rowdy goat figure, and radio shows from 1927 on helped fix his home on Korvatunturi fell.
Q 19Scandinavia's Yule goat is popularly linked to which Norse god, whose sky chariot was pulled by two goats?
Thor
Thor drove a pair named Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, though the Yule goat's true origins are unclear and the link is only a popular theory.
Q 20In England's West Country, Twelfth Night wassailers sing to which trees to wake them and scare off evil spirits?
Apple
Apple trees in cider orchards get the song in the hope of a heavy crop the next autumn, and a Somerset folktale gives the oldest tree its own guardian spirit.
Q 24In which Spanish region do children beat the Tió de Nadal, a smiling Yule-style log, until it 'drops' presents?
Catalonia
Catalonia's children feed the log and tuck it under a blanket from 8 December, so that it has plenty to give when the sticks and songs come out.
Q 25In modern pagan lore, the Holly King is defeated each Yule by a rival king named after which tree?
Oak
The Oak King rules the waxing half of the year, a scheme built from older legends of paired heroes in the 1948 study The White Goddess.
Q 26On the modern pagan Wheel of the Year, Yule sits directly opposite which sabbat, held at the summer solstice?
Litha
Litha got its name only in 1974, when the Wiccan writer Aidan Kelly borrowed an Anglo-Saxon month name preserved in an eighth-century calendar treatise.
Q 27On the pagan Wheel of the Year, which early February festival of the first stirrings of spring follows Yule?
Imbolc
Imbolc is the Gaelic name for 1 February, one of four old Celtic festivals that modern pagans combined with the solstices and equinoxes.
Q 28Which cheerful English adjective has been suggested, though the OED doubts it, to descend from the Norse word for Yule?
Jolly
Jolly reached English in the 14th century from Old French jolif, a word some linguists have traced back to Old Norse jól.
Q 29Which fantasy author gave his invented calendar two Yule days, one ending the old year and one starting the new?
J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien has his hobbits count each new year from the second Yuleday, and their month of Afteryule stands in for January.
Q 30On Yule Eve, Norse feasters laid hands on the bristles of which sacrificial animal while swearing solemn oaths?
A boar
A boar was chosen for its link to the god Freyr, and Sweden's pig-shaped Christmas cakes are thought to recall the custom.