WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.070 --> 00:00:04.920
I'm in Gävle, a city in Sweden, about a hundred
miles north of Stockholm.

2
00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:10.139
And every year, they have a Christmas tradition:
build an enormous goat out of straw and put

3
00:00:10.139 --> 00:00:11.320
it in the town square.

4
00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:13.740
It's called the Gävle Goat.

5
00:00:13.740 --> 00:00:16.379
There is a second Christmas tradition in Gävle.

6
00:00:16.379 --> 00:00:18.240
Burning the goat down.

7
00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:21.590
It's not like Guy Fawkes' Night in Britain,
or Burning Man in California,

8
00:00:21.590 --> 00:00:24.430
where something is built to be burned down.

9
00:00:24.430 --> 00:00:27.830
Burning this down is arson, it is completely
illegal,

10
00:00:27.830 --> 00:00:30.939
and genuinely, the people who make the giant
straw goat

11
00:00:30.939 --> 00:00:34.550
do not want their giant straw goat to be burned
down.

12
00:00:34.550 --> 00:00:36.390
Giant straw goats are expensive.

13
00:00:36.390 --> 00:00:41.340
It's just that in the fifty years that a ten-metre-high,
mostly-unprotected goat

14
00:00:41.340 --> 00:00:44.379
made of extremely flammable straw has been
put up here,

15
00:00:44.379 --> 00:00:46.770
the goat has only survived twelve times.

16
00:00:46.770 --> 00:00:48.450
Usually, it's burned down.

17
00:00:48.450 --> 00:00:51.219
In 1976, it was hit by a car.

18
00:00:51.219 --> 00:00:54.559
In 1979, it was burned down before it even
made it here.

19
00:00:54.559 --> 00:00:58.430
In 1988, you could place a bet on whether
the goat would burn down.

20
00:00:58.430 --> 00:01:01.109
Or at least you could, until the goat burned
down.

21
00:01:01.109 --> 00:01:05.140
In 2001, an American tourist burned it down,
and when he was arrested

22
00:01:05.140 --> 00:01:09.460
he said his friends had told him that burning
the goat was an entirely legal tradition.

23
00:01:09.460 --> 00:01:12.530
He got a couple of weeks in jail, didn't get
his cigarette lighter back,

24
00:01:12.530 --> 00:01:15.030
and left Sweden without paying a large fine.

25
00:01:15.030 --> 00:01:19.070
In 2005, vandals dressed as Santa Claus and
gingerbread men

26
00:01:19.070 --> 00:01:22.549
fired a burning arrow at the goat and burned
it down.

27
00:01:22.549 --> 00:01:26.020
In 2006, the city fireproofed the goat.

33
00:01:26.020 --> 00:01:27.030
It burned down.

29
00:01:27.030 --> 00:01:30.950
In 2009, there were webcams set up to spot
vandals.

30
00:01:30.950 --> 00:01:34.299
Those cameras were taken offline with a denial
of service attack

31
00:01:34.299 --> 00:01:36.060
just before the goat burned down.

32
00:01:36.060 --> 00:01:26.020
In 2011, they sprayed the goat with water
to form a protective coat of ice.

33
00:01:26.020 --> 00:01:27.030
It burned down.

34
00:01:42.840 --> 00:01:45.360
It is massive and it is made of tinder,

35
00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:48.229
it is really, really easy to burn down this
goat.

36
00:01:48.229 --> 00:01:52.509
Now, the local fire brigade are only two minutes
away, and sometimes they win.

37
00:01:52.509 --> 00:01:56.840
In 2014, despite three arson attempts, the
goat did survive.

38
00:01:56.840 --> 00:02:00.829
And now, it's 2016, the goat was put up just
a few days ago,

39
00:02:00.829 --> 00:02:04.930
and as I record this, it's still there.

40
00:02:04.930 --> 00:02:06.899
All it takes to create a tradition like this

41
00:02:06.899 --> 00:02:09.830
is the same thing happening for a few years
in a row.

42
00:02:09.830 --> 00:02:11.870
This goat wouldn't be famous if it didn't
burn down.

43
00:02:11.870 --> 00:02:12.970
I wouldn't be here.

44
00:02:12.970 --> 00:02:15.360
This would just be a small local display.

45
00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:20.870
But every year, someone takes the risk of
a fine and criminal record and time in jail

46
00:02:20.870 --> 00:02:23.120
to try and burn down someone else's hard work,

47
00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:25.800
probably because they're drunk when they do
it.

48
00:02:25.800 --> 00:02:26.880
And that strange, in-the-shadows, battle,

49
00:02:26.880 --> 00:02:29.440
that almost sitcom-like plot,

50
00:02:29.440 --> 00:02:30.970
gets the world interested,

51
00:02:30.970 --> 00:02:35.160
and sends a few tourists to a fairly obscure
Swedish city.

52
00:02:35.160 --> 00:02:37.170
Place your bets.

53
00:02:37.170 --> 00:02:40.530
Quick update: I'm back in London, just landed
at Heathrow airport,

54
00:02:40.530 --> 00:02:43.140
literally just a few hours after filming that.

55
00:02:43.140 --> 00:02:45.170
The goat has already been burned to the ground.