Most cultures believe in some kind of afterlife, but they also believe that people can get trapped between life and death and find themselves among the “living dead” or the “undead”. In the Viking world, the undead were known as draugr, and they feel a bit like a cross between a zombie and a vampire.
Draugr or Aptrganga
Draugr or Aptrganga (after walkers) were the dead who refused to pass into the next life in Norse mythology. They were also known as haugbui, which means mound dweller and is a reference to the burial mounds where they dwelled,or fyrirburdr, which means vision.
Draugr had grotesque features including blue skin and eyes so terrible that they could freeze a man in fear. They also had otherworldly strength and could terrorize nearby communities. The draugr are known to have done things such as killing livestock, collapsing homes, and murdering shepherds and servants by breaking all the bones in their bodies. Just seeing one could send someone mad.
When the Norsemen suspected that a draugr was at work, they would sometimes dig up the recently deceased and either stab their corpse or place a sword across its neck, so if the body tried to rise, it would become beheaded. They were also sometimes decapitated and buried with their head below their pelvis, or were simply weighed down by rocks.
Several “draugr” graves have been discovered with stones placed directly on the body as weights or a sword or knife placed as symbolic fixation. Fear of draugr was sufficient among the Vikings that the summoning of them in order to perform magic was forbidden under penalty of death in the Norwegian laws.
Glamr the Draugr
The Grettirs Saga, the antihero Grettir kills a draugr early in his life and takes the short sword that the dead man was buried with as a prize. Draugr are often described as greedy men who jealously guard their treasure after death rather than allowing it to pass to others. Years later, Grettir faces another draugr called Glamr.
Glamr was a Swedish herdsman who disrespected Yule traditions. This started with him demanding that his wife bring him food for Yuletide Eve. She reminded him that good Christian men do not eat meat on this night and that he should be fasting. Glamr responded that customs were better when men were considered heathens.
He then ignored a warning to avoid a known haunted region. He traveled out there and was never seen again. Assumed dead, the townsfolk tried to retrieve his body, but could not find it. They assumed that this was because he was killed by an evil spirit.
But that is not the end, as Glamr came back as a draugr, and many people went mad just as a result of looking at him. He also caused great mischief, including jumping on and destroying people’s homes.
Glamr is eventually killed by the hero Grettir, but at a great personal cost. Glamr cursed him to be eternally afraid of the dark, and he is haunted for the rest of his days by Glamr’s burning red demonic eyes.
Witch King Thrainn – The Norse Vlad the Impaler
In the Hromundar saga Gripsonnar, the hero Hromundr goes in to battle against a berserker warrior and an undead witch king called Thrainn, who is a draugr. He was previously a Gallic king and used sorcery for his evil ends in life, which led him to return as a draugr in death. Thrainn had previously killed 420 men singlehandedly, including Saemingr, the legendary first king of Norway, with an enchanted mistletoe sword.
Hromundr was the only man brave enough to enter the burial mound of the draugr to attempt to kill it. He wrestles the king into submission, despite the fact he was black and blue, blowing fire, and had enormous cat-like claws that he dug into the hero’s neck. Still, he wins, burns the body, and steals much of its treasure that draugr was guarding, including the mistletoe sword. The blade is magical and never dulls. It helps Hromundr win many battles throughout the rest of the saga.
Hrappr
In the Laxdoela saga, a Hebridean man called Hrappr, with a Scottish father and Hebridean mother, is forced to immigrate to Iceland after his violent temper causes him trouble in his homeland. He sets up a homestead and terrorizes his neighbors until he is bedridden in old age. He requests that he be the fire-room door of his house where he can continue to watch over his home.
After death, he does just that as a draugr. He terrorized everyone who remained on his own farm until they fled, and he started terrorizing the neighbors. This caused the neighbors to go to the local leader for help. A plan is hatched to dig up the body and move it away from the farm. While this caused a reduction in Hrappr’s haunting activities, he still eventually sent his son mad, and he killed himself.
Next, another kinsman set sail to Iceland with the intent of taking over the farm. But as they were sailing, their boat was struck by an unnatural storm, and all but one man was killed.
The farm remained deserted for several years until a man named Olafr bought it at a huge discount. It was not long after they arrived that Hrappr started haunting the new household. Olafr saw the draugr himself and threatened him with a spear, but Hrappr just grabbed the spear and sank into the earth. The next morning, he was dug up again, and his body had not decomposed, and he had the spear blade with him. This time they burnt the body and scattered the ashes at sea, and Hrappr was not seen again.
Thorolf Lame-Foot
In Eyrbyggja saga, Thorolf is another draugr. In life he was known to be an evil man, who even dabbled in black magic. One night he sat I his high seat all evening and refused to rise as other left. In the morning, he was found in the same high seat, dead, eyes open like the living dead. Everyone was afraid to walk past his corpse until his eyes were closed. It proved difficult to remove his body from his hall, as if it did not want to leave.
After his death, there was a negative energy in the air and many people preferred to stay indoors at night, fearing that Thorolf was not sleeping peacefully. Moreover, the oxen that had been used to drag Thorolf’s body to its final resting place went wild and howled themselves to death. Many shepherds reported being chased by Thorolf. There eventually came a day when not a single herdsman or beast made it home. The next day, the people found the body of one herdsman with every bone in his body broken. Thorolf also haunted his wife to the point that she died of madness.
After the perilous winter ended, Thorolf’s son decided to retrieve and move his father’s body to end the chaos. When they retrieved it from its burial mound, they found that the body had not decayed, but looked evil. Again, the body was heavy, and the oxen used to pull the cart to move the body quickly went mad. As a result, they had to bury him closer than they had wished, at a place henceforth called Half-Foot’s Head. For protection, they raised an enormous wall around the burial mound, so high that fowl could not pass over it, trapping him inside.
Thorgunna
Later in the same saga, Thorgunna suffers a similar fate. Following a storm in which it reportedly rained blood, only Thorgunna was not able to wash the red marks away. This quickly led to her falling ill. Knowing that she would soon die, she willed all her worldly wealth to the church except for her bedclothes. She said that these would not be of use to anyone and should be burned. But when she died, the man responsible for carrying out her wishes gave the bedclothes to his wife as a gift.
As a group of men was transporting her body to its burial place, a great storm beset them and they had to stop, taking the corpse into the house of a local couple overnight. As the men were speaking with their host and warming themselves in front of the fire, they heard sounds in the kitchen. When they went in, they saw Thorgunna’s corpse, completely naked, setting a meal for them all. Considering it dangerous to refuse the draugr’s hospitality, they blessed the meal with holy water and ate. Thorgunna returned to her corpse box and seems to have been buried without further incident.
The Draugr Epidemic
While this seemed like the end of things, when the men delivering her body returned home to Frodis-Water, people began to fall sick and die in the same way that Thorgunna had. There were also reports of many hauntings in the community, presumably by these draugr. This seems to imply that whatever ailment killed Thorgunna and caused her to rise again was contagious, like the bite from a zombie or a vampire.
One part of the story talks about a group of fishermen, who probably died at sea, who come into the local longhouse every night during Yule. Every night they enter, they would fling dirt and mud from their clothes on the others present, causing more deaths, presumably as they spread the disease.
There is another disturbing incident when it seems that a seal draugr enters the home. It is repeatedly beaten, but just keeps coming back. It is only eventually dealt with when its head was completely smashed in.
According to the saga, at the start of this series of incidents, Frodis-Water had a population of 37 serving folk, but following events, 18 were dead, five fled, and seven remained. If that doesn’t sound like a zombie apocalypse, I don’t know what does.
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