difference between swedish tomte and jultomten from a swedish perspective this article seems to wildly alternate between describing a tomte and jultomten which are very much two different things albeit the difference has decreased over the years like the swedish article correctly describes a tomte is a mythical short grey and bearded creature that took care of the farm if treated nicely or committed horrible mischief if not the tomte had however nothing to do with handing out presents and existed long before julbocken the yule goat was replaced by the modern jultomten basically a mix between a tomte and the american santa claus