Draugr
In Nordic folklore, the draugr, or draug, is an old archaic term for a malevolent revenant with varying ambiguous traits. In modern times, they are often portrayed as Norse supernatural zombies, loosely based on the draugr as described in early medieval Icelandic sagas. However, in myth and folklore, they comprise several complex ideas which change from story to story, especially in surviving Norwegian folklore, where the draugr remains a staple – see.
In the Icelandic sagas, from which most modern interest is garnered, draugrs live in their graves or royal palaces, often guarding treasure buried in their burial mound. They are revenants, or animated corpses, rather than ghosts, which possess intangible spiritual bodies.
Etymology
Development
The Old Norse word draugr, in the sense of the undead creature, is hypothetically traced to an unrecorded, meaning "delusion, illusion, mirage" etc., from gem-x-proto, ultimately from a Proto-Indo European stem wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dʰrówgʰos, from wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dʰrewgʰ-#Derived_terms, ultimately from the same root as 'dream', from a Proto-Indo European dʰrowgʰ-mos.Cognates includes , , wikt:dregen#Low_German, , gitrog, , , , , , wikt:drouk#Breton,, drúh, wikt:द्रोघ#Sanskrit, drógha,, drauga, wikt:?????#Old_Persian, draujana.
Descendants
Recorded descendants of draugr include:- , drøg, drog, also the forms: drauv, drøv, drov, in 1741 recorded as: drau
- Scanian: dråe, dråker, dråkel: "devil"; definite forms: drån, dronn, dröken: "the devil"
- , dröger, draugr
- Insular Scots: drow, trow: "malignant spirit, troll, gnome"
- Shetland dialect: drow, trow: "malignant spirit, ghost; troll, gnome, huldufólk,
- Orcadian dialect: drow, trow: "malignant spirit, troll, gnome, the devil"
- : vision, ghost
- : analogous to the
- : analogous to the
- , or čáhcerávga : analogous to the
- : geist; phantom, vision
- : a very old person
- : poor thing, wretch; coward, wimp
- : poor thing, wretch
Terminology
Nonfiction literature
One of the earliest nonfiction literature to mention the draugr is by Danish-Norwegian Hans Egede, during his time as the bishop of Greenland. In his book, The New Perlustration of Greenland, published in 1741, he describes the Norwegian myth of the Kraken, and follows up with a comment of the sea draugr:Dictionaries
One of the earliest dictionaries for draugr, or rather its descendants, was Swedish linguist and priest Johan Ernst Rietz's dialect dictionary of Swedish vernacular, which listed the Swedish descendants of Old Norse draugr as dröger and drög, including the archaic form draugr in the province of Närke. He also included Norwegian draug, drauv and drog for comparison, giving the definition for both Swedish and Norwegian as:Around the same time, although published a few years later, English philologist Richard Cleasby, and Icelandic scholar Guðbrandur Vigfússon, in "An Icelandic-English dictionary", defined Old Norse draugr as:
This description was repeated almost word for word by Icelandic linguist Geir T. Zoëga, in his book "A concise dictionary of old Icelandic".
Norwegian journalist, author, and editor Johan Christian Johnsen, in his Norwegian dictionary, gave a different, more specific definition for Norwegian draug than Rietz did in the 1860s, defining it as:
Written corpus
In the written corpus, the draugr is regarded not so much as a ghost, but a corporeal undead creature, or revenant, i.e., the reanimated corpse of the deceased, for example inside the burial mound or grave. Commentators extend the term draugr to the undead in medieval literature, even if it is never explicitly referred to as such in the text, and designated them instead as a #Haugbúi or an aptrganga – see Gjenganger.Unlike Kárr inn gamli in Grettis saga, who is specifically called a draugr, Glámr the ghost in the same saga is never explicitly called a draugr in the text, though called a "troll" in it. Yet Glámr is still routinely referred to as a draugr by modern scholars. Beings not specifically called draugr, but only referred to as "revenants" and "haunting" in these medieval sagas, are still commonly discussed as a draugr in various scholarly works, or the draugr and the haugbúi are lumped into one.
A further caveat is that the application of the term draugr may not necessarily follow what the term might have meant in the strict sense during medieval times, but rather follow a modern definition or notion of draugr, specifically such ghostly beings that occur in Icelandic folktales categorized as "Draugasögur" in Jón Árnason's collection, based on the classification groundwork laid by Konrad Maurer.
In Old Norse, draugr also meant a tree trunk or dry dead wood, which in poetry could refer to a man or warrior, since Old Norse poetry often used terms for trees to represent humans, especially in kennings, referencing the myth that the god Odin and his brothers created the first humans Ask and Embla from trees. There was thus a connection between the idea of a felled tree's trunk and that of a dead man's corpse. Similarly, the term kraki can refer to a branchy tree, as well as a meager creature, such as a corpse.
Also, one of the names for Odin was Draugadróttinn, "Lord of the draugr", in the Ynglinga saga, chapter 7.
Mound dweller ()
Haugbúi is a variation of the draugr. It means "mound dweller", i.e. the dead body living within its mound, compounding haugr, also found in dialectal English as "how, howe", and búi, from búa, related to "by, be";. The notable difference from a draug is that a mound dweller doesn't leave its grave site and only attacks those who trespass upon their territory.Beings in British folklore such as Lincolnshire "shag-boy" and Scots "hogboon" derive their names from haugbui.
A modern rendering is also barrow-wight, popularized by J. R. R. Tolkien in his novels, however, initially used for the draugr in Eiríkur Magnússon's and William Morris' 1869 translation of Grettis saga, long before Tolkien employed the term; rendering Icelandic "Sótti haugbúinn með kappi" as "the barrow-wight setting on with hideous eagerness".
Troll
The term draugr is partially synonymous with troll, and both share many similarities and features in older folklore. Rather than the modern depiction of monstrous humanoids with big noses, trolls were originally rather esoteric malevolent supernatural beings, by analogy synonymous with 'demon, devil, and thereof malignant spirits', including ghosts, but also branching into the concept of esoteric fairytale races, like jötunns and hidden people/troll-folk, etc. For comparison, the word "troll" is part of one of the common words for magic in the Nordic languages: "troll-dom".Examples of direct draug/troll synonymity; the algae species nostoc commune have historically carried the name draugspy in Norway, and trollspy in Götaland, Sweden; and the Norwegian sea draugr have historically often been called a "sea troll". The synonymity have been noted by scholars already in the Old Norse written corpus, such as Grettis saga, where Glámr the ghost is called a "troll", but not a draugr, despite showing similarities to Kárr the old, which is called a draugr. Glámr, in spite of this, is still routinely referred to as a draugr by modern scholars. Icelandic scholar Ármann Jakobsson notes that in this and comparable instances, the term "troll" designates some sort of revenant, or more specifically the human undead, and since the term can also mean "demon", the sense is ambiguous.
The notion of draugrs who live in mountains, akin to trolls, is present in Norwegian poetry, such as Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and works of Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, but also in Faroese folklore, where the dreygur share many traits seen in later troll-lore, such as inhabiting mountains and hills, and described as large, strong creatures with pale skin and long, dark hair, and often depicted as being cannibalistic. Further comparisons can be made to English derivatives of : the Lincolnshire "shag-boy", Caithness-Orkneyan "hogboon", and Shetland "hjogfinni", which have been compared to goblins and brownies, but also old Nordic traditions of the dead and mountains.
Northern Isle descendants, drow and trow, mainly refer to a race of folkloric beings, cognate to the Nordic trolls, wights, and gnomes, and further, in Shetland, analog to the concept of the hidden people in Nordic folklore, a loose race or conglomeration of fairies, wights, gnomes, or trolls, etc, who live underground in an analog plane of existence, who may appear and disappear at will. It is thought that the form trow stems from L-vocalization of, and then intermixing with drow via linguistic and figurative convergence. However, the sense of "ghost" also survives in Shetland.
The sense of "devil", or "the devil", survive sporadically as well. Scanian indefinite descendants: dråe, dråker, dråkel, mean "devil", while some forms only survive in definite form: drån, dronn, dröken, meaning "the devil". In Orkney, the descendant drow can also be used to refer to "the devil".