Late in the evening on 3 December 2005, police in the Swedish city of Gävle, 170 kilometres north of Stockholm, were called to the scene of an assault. They were responding to reports that two miscreants, Santa Claus and his accomplice, the gingerbread man, were shooting flaming arrows at a giant straw goat. The police probably sighed as they sped to the scene: apart from the cheery outfits, this kind of thing had become depressingly familiar.
“We had cameras watching the goat, but the only thing we could see on the film was flaming arrows”
Straw goats are the Scandinavian equivalent of Santa’s reindeer. During the festive season families, and even whole towns, vie with each other to erect the most impressive ornamental yule goat, or julbocken. But the tradition has been taken to extremes in Gävle. Every December since 1966, the locals have erected a 3-tonne monster stretching about 13 metres from hooves to horns. It began as a marketing stunt dreamed up by the local advertising executive Stig Gavlén, to attract customers to the town’s shops. Gävle now holds the record for the world’s largest yule goat. But this fame comes at a price: the giant goat has become an irresistible target for arsonists.
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The Gävle Goat Committee – the team responsible for its funding and construction – have not taken such attacks lying down. These days, the goat is protected by cameras, security guards, dogs and sometimes soldiers. Forming such defences, however, simply seems to have added spice to the challenge for would-be fire-starters: the goat has been incinerated seven times in the last decade alone. Inevitably, this makes for a desperate scramble to build a new one in time for Christmas, at a cost of more than 10,000.
This year, however, the committee should sleep easier during the holiday period. While the goat-cams remain vigilant and the police and security guards certainly help, the Gävle goat committee owe their peace of mind this winter to a man called Freddy Klaffmo, and the Soviet space programme.
Klaffmo is the director of Fiberprotector, a Stockholm-based company specialising in chemicals for preserving and protecting textiles. In September 2006, he called the committee and told them of a sure-fire way to save their goat’s hide – a flame retardant called Noflan. Unfortunately, they had heard it all before: attempts to fireproof the goat began in the 1970s and had always failed.
“We were very sceptical,” recalls Anna Östman, communications manager for the city council and spokesperson for the goat committee. Klaffmo even tried to drum up enthusiasm at the fire department that regularly tackled Gävle’s blazing billies. Again, he got short shrift: “They said ‘if there’s even a little flame, the goat is gone’,” says Klaffmo. “Nobody believed you could protect 3 tonnes of dry straw. It burns like hell. Besides, the goat is vertical so a small flame in the leg spreads very quickly. Three minutes and it is burned up.”
Klaffmo soon realised that only hard evidence would convince the committee. So he retired to his workshop and began building miniature straw goats. He soaked each one with a different concentration of flame retardant and let them dry, then doused them with gasoline and set them alight. After a few weeks of testing, he was confident enough to contact the committee again. He arranged to light up his Noflan-soaked mini-goat before their very eyes. His reputation was on the line.
The committee were as sceptical as ever – until the smoke cleared. “When the gasoline had burned off, it was still a goat,” Klaffmo says. They immediately agreed to give his idea a try.
Noflan had already proved itself elsewhere. Created in a collaboration between the Moscow State Textile University and the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow in the 1980s, it was developed to protect the fabric used inside Soviet spacecraft. Noflan was eventually commercialised and licensed to Firestop Chemicals in the late 1990s. According to Mick Gallagher, the company’s head of sales, Noflan is now used to treat fabric and carpets in trains, buses and aircraft, including the new Airbus A380.
Noflan uses the combustion process itself to create a fireproof layer around a material. In the centre of each Noflan molecule is a phosphorus atom. As the surface of, say, a Noflan-infused carpet begins to burn, the phosphorus helps to convert the burning material into a char made up of cross-linked polymer chains – a thin but tough layer resembling the blackened crust on a burnt pie. At the same time, nitrogen and hydroxide-containing groups in the flame retardant react during combustion with oxygen, and the burning material, releasing carbon dioxide and water vapour. This produces small bubbles or voids in the char, turning it into a swollen layer – a kind of carbonised foam. “Voids help create a thermal barrier and this stops combustible material feeding into the flame,” says Galina Dudareva of Firestop. With the flame isolated from its fuel, the fire snuffs out.
Yet Noflan, like a number of other fire retardants, has a particular weakness when used outdoors: it is water soluble. “If it rains, it washes out,” Klaffmo admits. This is why previous attempts to use fire retardants on the goat had failed. Heavy rain or sleet simply washed the chemicals away. But Klaffmo had a secret weapon: he applied a second treatment to the city’s goat, a fluoropolymer similar to Teflon that he believed would hold the Noflan fast, whatever the weather.
A few months later, on 15 December 2006, Gävle’s newly coated goat got its first real test, just in time for its 40th birthday. Late in the evening, a mystery assailant doused one of the goat’s front legs with petrol and set it alight.
In the morning, the damage was revealed. A red sash around the goat’s knee had been completely destroyed, but miraculously the foreleg itself, though blackened, had survived. “Usually when they do that they burn down the whole goat,” says Östman. “This time you could see they had tried – but nothing more.” Klaffmo says he had overlooked the ribbon and had forgotten to treat it. With a replacement ribbon and a touch-up with fresh straw, the goat was like new and survived through Christmas with no further attacks.
The coating lasts at least three years before a reapplication is needed, Klaffmo says. “It could rain every day and there’s no problem.”
So far, so good. But what if the goat’s new coat simply spurs would-be goat burners to more extreme actions? “That’s the risk, of course,” says Östman. “I’m sure they could find something else to damage the goat.”
Its assailants have certainly been resourceful in the past. Santa Claus and the gingerbread man, for instance, managed to hide from the goat-cams just long enough to destroy the goat with their flaming arrows. “We had cameras watching the goat but they knew exactly what area the cameras were covering, so they stood just beyond it. The only thing we could see on the film was the arrows,” Östman says. In other years the goat has been smashed into by a car, dragged into the river, kicked apart and had its legs sawn off. Klaffmo’s cocktail would be useless against this kind of ruminant ruination. “I don’t want to think about it,” says Östman.
December has always been a stressful time for the goat committee. “We used to wake on a morning, wondering whether something had happened,” says Östman. “Sometimes the local newspaper would phone at 3 am, telling us the goat was on fire.” Östman admits she will sneak regular peeks at the goat-cam every day over the festive season, but the committee has a reason to feel it has outsmarted Santa, the gingerbread man and all their nefarious chums. “They’ve been trying it for such a long time,” she says. “Now it’s our turn.”
