Hello friends, and Happy New Year!
We’re six days into 2026, and if you’re anything like me, you’re struggling with an ambitious resolution right about now.1 Every year, I struggle with this and—somehow—every year I’m disappointed that I didn’t magically become a good person overnight on December 31st. Which is insane on its face, and yet. Here we are.
While I was doomscrolling on January 2nd, I came across a post on Instagram that was going modestly viral after having already gone viral on Tumblr in 2024. On its face, it sounded like absolute and complete nonsense, but I wanted so badly for it to be true that I went and looked it up. Here’s the post:
This sounds so good, right? Let’s all hype ourselves up. I want to fight Loki for dominion over trickery. I want to become Robin Hood and steal from the ultrarich to give to the poor. Yule Boasting is fun!
Originally posted on Tumblr, this thing caught on like wildfire. Not only is it more fun than traditional resolutions like losing weight, etc, but it’s super on-brand for the alcohol-soaked, hyper-masculine, larger-than-life, vaguely ridiculous version of Viking culture we get in a lot of TV and movies.
Which is why I was disappointed that Googling “Norse Yule Boasting” yielded nothing except one person debunking it in early 2025. Apparently, there is no such tradition as Yule Boasting in Old Norse culture, to my dismay. And, apparently, to the dismay of many! dragon-in-a-fez’s original post has been reblogged over 75,000 times and counting.
Except… is there such a tradition?
