Messages from the Otherworld: The Roles of the Dead in Medieval Iceland
By Kirsi Kanerva
Deconstructing Death: Changing Cultures of Death, Dying, Bereavement and Care in the Nordic Countries, ed. Michael Hviid Jacobsen (University Press of Southern Denmark, 2013)
Introduction: After a little while people became aware that Glámr did not lay quiet. This caused the folk great trouble so that many lost consciousness when seeing him, and some lost their wits. Right after Christmas men thought they saw him there at the farm. People became incredibly frightened; many then ran away. Next Glámr started to ride on the roofs of houses at night so that they nearly caved in; he then walked almost night and day. People hardly dared to go up into the dale though they had many errands. People in the district thought this caused them great harm.
The above mentioned excerpt is from a fourteenth-century Icelandic saga, Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (later: Grettis saga), and describes a so-called living dead corpse that becomes restless after death. The ghosts in sagas are no phantoms or incorporeal spirits, but appear to the living in their physical and tangible bodies at a dark time of the day or year. The dead look the same as they used to when they lived, and are thus easily recognized by the living. Some of the few changes noticed when corpses of the malevolent dead are dug out of their graves are, for instance, that they have turned ‘black as Hel’ and ‘big as an ox’. Unlike the zombies made infamous by the American film industry the living dead in Icelandic sagas usually become restless of their own free will.
This will of theirs is often a malicious one, though non-harmful dead sometimes appear to the living as well. Their presence is usually not persistent, whereas the malicious dead often continually harass the living, causing fear, madness, illness and death unless they are conquered and banished. The most common procedure for doing this in sagas is to behead the corpse and burn the body. Banishment of the malevolent ghost is always a difficult task and brings much honour and fame to the hero who accomplishes it.
Click here to read this article from Academia.edu
Top Image: A ghost depicted in Laxdæla Saga:
Messages from the Otherworld: The Roles of the Dead in Medieval Iceland
By Kirsi Kanerva
Deconstructing Death: Changing Cultures of Death, Dying, Bereavement and Care in the Nordic Countries, ed. Michael Hviid Jacobsen (University Press of Southern Denmark, 2013)
Introduction: After a little while people became aware that Glámr did not lay quiet. This caused the folk great trouble so that many lost consciousness when seeing him, and some lost their wits. Right after Christmas men thought they saw him there at the farm. People became incredibly frightened; many then ran away. Next Glámr started to ride on the roofs of houses at night so that they nearly caved in; he then walked almost night and day. People hardly dared to go up into the dale though they had many errands. People in the district thought this caused them great harm.
The above mentioned excerpt is from a fourteenth-century Icelandic saga, Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (later: Grettis saga), and describes a so-called living dead corpse that becomes restless after death. The ghosts in sagas are no phantoms or incorporeal spirits, but appear to the living in their physical and tangible bodies at a dark time of the day or year. The dead look the same as they used to when they lived, and are thus easily recognized by the living. Some of the few changes noticed when corpses of the malevolent dead are dug out of their graves are, for instance, that they have turned ‘black as Hel’ and ‘big as an ox’. Unlike the zombies made infamous by the American film industry the living dead in Icelandic sagas usually become restless of their own free will.
Click here to read this article from Academia.edu
Top Image: A ghost depicted in Laxdæla Saga:
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