It turns out that Norway has a unique Easter tradition called “påskekrim (translated from Norwegian as “Easter crime). Every Easter, Norwegians voraciously consume detective novels and thrillers, watch crime series, and listen to audio investigations. This tradition is so well-established that bookstores before Easter create special sections featuring new detective stories (marked as “påskekrim), crime-themed TV series are broadcasted, and sometimes even milk cartons carry short detective tales.
The tradition began in 1923 when two young Norwegian authors—Norrdahl Gryug and Nils Lie—released a detective novel titled “The Train to Bergen Has Been Robbed at Night. On the eve of Easter, the publishing house placed an advertisement for the novel on the front page of one of the largest newspapers, styled it as real news. People mistook it for an actual event, and the book instantly became a hit. Since then, the tradition has taken root.
Additionally, it turns out that the “Easter Bunny” originates from German Lutheran practices, where the bunny initially played the role of a judge, evaluating children’s behavior—whether they had been obedient or disobedient—at the beginning of the Easter period, similar to Santa Claus’s “naughty and nice” list. Moreover, according to lore, this creature carries a basket filled with painted eggs and sometimes candies and toys, which it leaves in the homes of children. Thankfully, not in a stocking!
By the way, it’s sometimes a bunny and sometimes a rabbit. Apparently, it’s not that important.
There’s another dubious but quite popular interpretation. According to it, the name “Easter” comes from Eostre (Eostra), a Teutonic goddess revered as a goddess of spring and fertility. According to Teutonic myth, a little girl once found a dying bird and prayed for assistance from Eostre. The goddess appeared, crossing the rainbow bridge—the snow melting under her feet. Seeing the bird gravely injured, Eostre transformed it into a hare and told the girl that from then on, the hare would return every year, carrying eggs dyed the colors of the rainbow. However, it’s noted that Eostre’s name is only mentioned once—by Bede the Venerable in his work De Temporum Ratione (“The Reckoning of Time”). No other mentions of this name exist. Moreover, there are no tales or legends associated with Eostre; thus, anything told about her is considered apocryphal. Yet, no better explanations seem to exist.
And shifting from hares and goddesses to something more down-to-earth, it turns out that even pizza has an Easter past. The earliest recorded use of the word pizza dates back to May 997 and is found in a Latin notarial document from the city of Gaeta, which was then part of the Byzantine Empire. The text says that a tenant was to annually give the bishop twelve pizzas and a pair of chickens on Easter. So, who knows—perhaps the first festive Easter pizza was not a margarita but something between a ritual and a rent.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 