Norway’s Christmas markets do not wait politely for December. They are popping up in every fjord-side hamlet and village pre-Advent each year, as if to establish who truly controls the calendar. It is an old trick: get in ahead of the season, before the wallets are emptied and the mood soured by overcrowded malls. By late November the posters invite folks to whatever premises can be commandeered, where tables and booths stand as stubborn little outposts of light and noise in the darkness, perfumed with pine, waffles, knitted mittens, and optimism.

They are organized not by corporations with marketing departments, but by private individuals, associations, and clubs. Which means they are held wherever space can be borrowed or begged: in community halls, in school gyms that still smell faintly of basketball, in the echoing atriums of shopping centers. There, the human repertoire of hobby and craft is laid bare. Knitting, painting, needle-felting, cake-baking, salt-dough trolls, farmstead cheese—everything produced in basements and barns under the dream—or illusion—that someone, somewhere, might want it.

And someone does. This is the miracle. The julemarked is not quite commerce and not quite charity, but something more peculiar: the annual moment when an evening’s worth of yarn or butter or sawdust is solemnly exchanged for a few crisp banknotes or the inevitable ping from the preferred payment app. It is tradition, yes, but also justification—proof that the hobby was not entirely in vain.

Part of the draw, of course, is the buyers themselves. People like to put something handmade under the tree. Some prefer it because it isn’t the glossy, mass-produced object already stacked in every store and wrapped under every other tree in town. Others reach for it as a kind of moral salve—compensation for the time they never chose to spend baking, knitting, or carving themselves. In this way, the handmade mitten or jar of jam functions as both gift and alibi: evidence that someone in the household still knows how to do things properly. (Whether that counts as virtue by proxy is left, discreetly, unexamined.)

And this is of course what I intend to exploit to the fullest. Someone must take responsibility for converting remorse and anti-consumerist zeal into cash, and it may as well be me. Here is what I shall be offering the public, wrapped not in sentiment but in brown paper and the faint odor of wood shavings.

Cross necklaces

I had a few scraps lying around — too small to be useful for much, and with a big crack. Usually, pieces like that end up in the fire pan, perfect for grilling bacon-cheese sausages. Yes, I know I say that a lot. But they’re just so good!

Anyway, I decided to make some cross necklaces. I sketched an organically shaped cross, cut out one blank, and used it as a template for the rest. The idea came from a visit to a Dalahäst factory in Sweden, where they used a stamp to mark the wood for cutting.

After a few good tunes on the sound system, I had a nice stack of blanks ready. The remaining scraps went back into the burn bin — saved for a future sausage session.

The next task: whittlin’. I used my Morakniv whittling knife to carve facets and bevels around the edges.

Then came the sanding. I used my Mirka sanding block with a soft pad and 120 grit Mirka Abranet sand paper. It smoothed the facets and edges in no time.

After drilling a hole for the leather cord, I applied a generous coat of Liberon beeswax finish.

A day later, once the finish had cured, I polished each piece with a soft rag to bring out a gentle shine.

Finally, I cut pieces of leather cord and tied adjustable knots.

Rinse and repeat a few times, and I ended up with a good batch of cross necklaces ready for the market.

On the next page, I’ll make some Purpleheart hearts.