This knitted doll is a Swedish Fairy known as a Tomten. The Tomten is a house spirit that aids the inhabitants of the homestead where it lives. The Harry Potter books have a character based on this which the author, J. K. Rowling refers to in the books, as a house-elf.
Tomten are quite prideful and are often depicted as wearing thread-bare, shabby clothes. As in the Harry Potter books, if the house-owner gives the Tomten a new set of clothes, it will no longer serve the household and leaves. (In the folktales, the gift of the new suit of clothes increases the Tomten's social status and it feels that it is now too good to continue providing the menial services which it did in the past.)
My favorite folktale of the Tomten tells how the homestead's serving girl in a hurry one day throws the butter into the bowl prior to putting in the porridge, instead of on top as she did normally. The Tomten mistakenly thinks he has been cheated and retaliates by killing the farm's best milk-cow. He returns to finish the bowl of porridge and realizes that he was wrong and proceeds to steal the best cow from the farm down the road, replacing it with a glamour that dies after a few days.
Some folks that still follow the Old Germanic ways feed the conceptualization of the Tomten as the representative of the harmony and Frith of their home.They set up a small house shrine with a Tomten figure and take conscious deliberate measures to nurture the spirit of their home, perhaps with an ocaisonal bowl of porridge! This doll was knitted with that purpose in mind. Although, since we already have our own House Spirit, Ghostie I gave this one to my friends Cliff and Misha, who appreciate stuffed animals in the same manner that my wife and I do.
The pattern is Seasonal Dolls from Maria Marics and was done with acrylic yarn and poly fiberfill stuffing. I was very pleased with the way I was able to build up the nose with embroidery using the same flesh-colored yarn.
Recently I was told about a wonderful children's book called The Tomten by Astrid Lingren.