Part IV: Draugr Attacks and Slaying the Undead

Part IV: Draugr Attacks and Slaying the Undead

The dead body was a vehicle of plague and illness, such as that of the sorcerer Mithothyn of Saxo Grammaticus, but in a day and age in which germ theory was unknown, the causative agent was perceived to be the evil intent of the draugr. Thus it followed that the dead might also make physical attacks against the living. The draugrwas believed to feel a longing for the things of life, and even envy of those yet alive. This notion is poignantly described in Friðþjofs saga, when a dying king declared:

My howe shall stand beside the firth. And there shall be but a short distance between mine and Thorsteinn’s, for it is well that we should call to one another (Ellis-Davidson, Road to Hel, p. 91).

The idea of dead friends calling greetings from gave to grave is a peaceful one, exhibiting a wistful desire for the friendship experienced while yet living. However, this desire for the things of life often took on more dangerous overtones as in the story of Killer-Hrapp, a brutal man who declared to his wife on his deathbed:

I want my grave to be dug under the living-room door, and I am to be placed upright in it under the threshold, so that I can keep an even better watch over my house.

The saga goes on to say that:

Hrapp soon died and all his instructions were carried out, for Vigdis [his wife] did not dare do otherwise. And difficult as he had been to deal with during his life, he was now very much worse after death, for his corpse would not rest in its grave… (Magnusson and Palsson, Laxdaela Saga, pp. 77-78).

The draugar who most dramatically demonstrate the desire for their past life are those that appear in Eyrbyggja Saga. The ghosts of drowned Thorodd and his crew, dripping wet, and the mud-covered band of draugar led by Thorir Wood-Leg invade the living-room of the hall at Frodriver:

The people bolted out of the room, as you’d expect, and that evening they had to do without light, heating-stones, and everything else the fire could give (Palsson and Edwards, Eyrbyggja Saga, pp. 166-167).

These undead not only deprive the inhabitants of Frodriver of the benefits of their hall at night, while they are present the wage mud-fights, no doubt damaging the hall and rendering it uninhabitable by day as well.

In the sagas, “those who die have not gone to a better place, they are on the contrary driven away from the comfort of their homes and the company of their kin. They feel cold and hungry” (Christiansen, “The Dead and the Living,” p. 10). It is no wonder then that the draugr should come to resent the living, and at times walk again to reclaim a place they feel is rightfully theirs. This envy of the living is related to the motive driving the most powerful and dangerous of draugar: their insatiable hunger. This hunger is seen in the encounter of Aran and Asmund, sword brothers, who made an oath that if one should die, the other would sit vigil with him for three days inside the burial mound. This when Aran died, Asmund equipped his brother’s barrow with his possessions, his banners and armor, hawk, hound, and horse. Then Asmund set himself to wait the three days:

During the first night, Aran got up from his chair and killed the hawk and hound and ate them. On the second night he got up again from his chair, and killed the horse and tore it into pieces; then he took great bites at the horse-flesh with his teeth, the blood streaming down from his mouth all the while he was eating…. The third night Asmund became very drowsy, and the first thing he knew, Aran had got him by the ears and torn them off (Palsson and Edwards, “Egils saga einhenda ok Asmundar saga berserkjabana,” in Gautrek’s Saga and Other Medieval Tales, pp. 99-101).

Saxo Grammaticus, who recounts the same basic story, adds, “… but horse nor dog sated its hunger; swiftly it turned its lightning talons to slash my cheek and take off my ear” (Saxo Grammaticus, Vol I, p. 151; Other hungry ghosts include Glamr of Grettirs Saga and Thrain of Hromundar saga Greipssonar, p. 67). The implication is clear that the draugr, having devoured the animals interred with him in the mound, had determined to make Asmund his next grisly meal. The unnatural hunger of the draugrwas perhaps a physical manifestation of its desire for life. It is for this reason that modern commentators often link the draugr and the vampire. “In these tales the corpse within the grave is always represented with vampire-like propensities, superhuman strength, and a fierce desire to destroy any living creature which ventures to enter the mound” (Ellis-Davidson, Road to Hel, p. 92).

The draugr’s victims were not restricted to trespassers in its mound. The roaming ghosts decimated livestock by running the animals to death while either riding them or pursuing them in some hideous, half-flayed form. Shepherd, whose duties to their flocks left them out of doors at night time, were also particular targets for the hunger and hatred of the undead:

… the oxen which had been used to haul Thorolf’s body were ridden to death by demons, and every single beast that came near his grave went raving mad and howled itself to death. The shepherd at Hvamm often came racing home with Thorolf after him. One day that autumn neither sheep nor shepherd came back to the farm” (Palsson and Edwards, Eyrbyggja Saga, p. 115).

Stabled animals and unwary travelers were crushed and broken by the draugr, and those unwary enough to open hall doors after nightfall for a knocking visitor might never be seen again:

And when they were at meat there came a loud sharp blow at the door. Then one of them said, “Good tidings must be near now.” He ran out, and they thought that he was long coming back. The Iostan and his men went out, and saw him that had gone out stark mad, and in the morning he died (Gudbrandr Vigfusson and F. York Powell, “Floamanna saga,” in Origines Islandicae. Oxford, Clarendon, 1905, Vol II, p. 646).

The Icelandic custom was to tap three times at the windows after dark, and “a knock, especially if it were only a single stroke, was a sure sign of a ghost or other evil creature seeking entry” (Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends, pp. 135-136).

Although staying indoors at night was safer than venturing outside when a draugr was about, the creature might attack the hall itself:

At night the people at Hvamm used to hear loud noises from outside, and it often sounded to them as if there was somebody sitting astride the roof (Palsson and Edwards, Eyrbyggja Saga, p. 115).

This type of onslaught was known as house-riding, and the draugr used its enormous strength to batter the roof, while the drumming of its heels terrified the inhabitants within:

Someone seemed to be climbing the house and then straddling the roof-top above the hall, and beating his heels against the roof so that every beam in the house was cracking (Fox and Palsson, Grettirs Saga, p. 57)

The draugr’s attack could also be intended to gain entry into the hall by destroying the doors:

The entire frame of the outer door had been broken away, and a crude hurdle tied carelessly in its place. The wooden partition which before had separated the hall from the entrance passage had also broken away, both below and above the crossbeam (Ibid.).

Overcoming the dead would seem to have been quite difficult, but the Scandinavians believed that even the dead could die again:

I can tell with truth, I say,
For I have seen all the worlds
‘neath the welkin.
Niflhel beneath nine worlds I saw,
There men die out of Hel.
(Hollander, “Vafthruthnismal,” The Poetic Edda, p. 50)

Although iron weapons could harm the draugr, as with many supernatural creatures, cold iron was not sufficient to stop the dead from walking. First, the draugr must be overcome by grappling hand-to-hand with the creature, and wrestling with it until it was subdued (Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends, p. 107). The hero next must decapitate the ghost, often with a sword found in the draugr’s own barrow (Chadwick, “Norse Ghosts,” p. 55). This was at times a difficult task, for in some traditions the hero was required to leap between the head and the body before the corpse hit the ground, or walk widdershins three times between the head and body afterwards, or drive a wooden stake into the headless body in the same manner other cultures used to dispose of vampires (Saxo Grammaticus, Vol. I, p. 150 and Vol. II, p. 89). The final step in dispatching the draugr was to burn the remains to cold ashes and then bury the ashes in a remote spot or throw them out to sea: only then was the undead truly dead and destined to rise no more (Ellis-Davidson, Road to Hel, pp. 37-38).

(Source: vikinganswerlady.com)

Part I: Introduction and Description of the Walking Dead

For the Vikings, the concept of the afterlife was often much more immediate than glorious skaldic tales of Valholl or the Christian’s Heaven: once the dead body was placed within the grave, it was believed to become “animated with a strange life and power” (Hilda Ellis-Davidson. The Road to Hel. Westport CT, Greenwood P., 1943. p. 96). The dead person continued a sort of pseudo-life within the grave, not as a spirit or ghost, but as an actual undead corpse similar in many respects to thenosferatu or central European vampire (Ellis-Davidson,The Road to Hel, p. 92).

The undead were known by various names. The haugbui (from haugr meaning “howe” or “barrow”) was a mound-dweller, the dead body living on within its tomb. The haugbuiwas rarely found far from its burial place, and is the type of undead usually found in Norwegian saga material. The draugr was “the animated corpse that comes forth from its grave mound, or shows restlessness on the road to burial” (Ellis-Davidson, Road to Hel, p. 80). Also known as aptrgangr (lit. “after-goer,” or “one who walks after death”) the draugr is the roaming undead most frequently encountered in the Icelandic sagas. Whichever name is used, the undead of Scandinavia was a physical body, the actual corpse of the deceased, and though the term “ghost” may be used to describe it, modern connotations of a phantom or incorporeal spirit do not apply to these supernatural creatures.

The physical descriptions of the undead further reinforce the idea of a walking corpse. The undead is said to be hel-blár (“black as death” or “blue as death”) or ná-folr (“corpse-pale). In Eyrbyggja Saga, a shepherd who is killed by a draugr and who is destined himself to become undead is said to be “coal-black,” and the draugr that killed him ishel-blár when disinterred (Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards, trans. Eyrbyggja Saga. Buffalo, U of Toronto P, 1973. pp 115 & 187). Glamr, the undead shepherd of Grettirs Saga, was reported to be dark blue in color (Denton Fox and Hermann Palsson, trans.Grettirs Saga. Toronto, U of Toronto P, 1974. p. 72), and in Laxdaela Saga the bones of a dead sorceress who had appeared in dreams were dug up and found to be “blue and evil looking” (Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson, trans., Laxdaela Saga. NY, Penguin, 1969. p. 235).

The undead corpse was rendered yet more terrifying by its propensity to swell to enormous size. This property of the undead was apparently not due to gasses released by decay, for the body of the draugr was also found to be enormously heavy, and was often described as being uncorrupted, even many years after death. Thorolf ofEyrbyggja Saga was “uncorrupted, and with an ugly look about him… swollen to the size of an ox,” and his body could not be raised without levers, it was so heavy (Palsson & Edwards, Eyrbyggja Saga, p. 187. See also Grettirs Saga, p. 115).

The size attributed to the draugr was a way of expressing the vast strength of the creature. The sagas describe the struggles of kinsmen to straighten the body for burial (Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards, trans., Egils Saga. NY, Penguin, 1976, p. 150. See also Eyrbyggja Saga, p. 114). The aptrgangr often demonstrated its power by literally crushing its victim to death. Glamr’s attack leaves a shepherd “with his neck broken and every bone in his body crushed” (Fox and Palsson, Grettirs Saga, p. 74. See alsoEyrbyggja Saga, p. 115). Frequently, in describing battles between a saga hero and adraugr where the hero is a man acknowledged to have enormous strength himself, the fight was often an unsure thing, with the combatants struggling back and forth, evenly matched in the deadly contest (Nora Kershaw, trans., “Hromundar saga Greipssonar,” inStories and Ballads of the Far Past. Cambridge, University P., 1921, p. 68. See alsoGrettirs Saga, p. 37).

The draugr also at times exhibited powers of a magical nature, possessing knowledge of the future (Peter G. Foote and David M. Wilson, The Viking Achievement. London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1970. p. 405), controlling the weather (Ellis-Davidson, Road to Hel, p. 163), and shape-shifting. The dead could appear in many forms, such as a seal (Palsson and Edwards, Eyrbyggja Saga, p. 165. See also Laxdaela Saga, p. 80), a great flayed bull, a grey horse with no ears or tail and a broken back, or a cat that would sit upon a sleeper’s chest and grow steadily heavier until the victim suffocated (Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends. Berkeley, U of California P, 1972. p. 166. Also personal experience… my Norwegian Forest Cat does the same thing, even though I’m pretty sure he’s not a draugr!). The draugr Thrain shape-shifted into a “cat-like creature” (kattakyn) in Hromundar saga Greipssonar:

Then Thrain turned himself into a troll, and the barrow was filled with a horrible stench; and he stuck his claws into the back of Hromund’s neck, tearing the flesh from his bones… (Kershaw, P. 68)

The draugr could also move magically through the earth, swimming through solid stone as does Killer-Hrapp:

Then Olaf tried to rush Hrapp, but Hrapp sank into the ground where he had been standing and that was the end of their encounter (Magnussen and Palsson,Laxdaela Saga, p. 103).

This certainly would have been a useful talent, allowing the undead to enter or leave its burial place at will.