The Draugr: The Living Dead of Norse Legend Who Guard Their Burial Mounds
The ghosts of most traditions are made of mist. The Norse dead are made of meat . The draugr —the "again-walker," aptrgangr , of Icelandic saga and Scandinavian folk belief—is no transparent wisp wringing its hands in a corridor: he is the corpse itself, risen in the body, swollen and heavy, "blue as death and fat as a bull" in the sagas' relished phrase, possessed of more than mortal strength, stinking of the grave, and at home in it—for the classic draugr does not wander the earth homeless: he occupies his burial mound as a lord occupies a hall, seated on his treasure in the barrow's blue-lit chamber, and defends it against all comers. He crushes intruders, rides roofs at night until the rafters crack, breaks the backs of cattle and the minds of shepherds; iron may bite him but rarely stops him; and the sagas—the most unsentimental literature Europe produced—treat him neither as allegory nor as superstition but as a problem : a physical, legal, and fina...