thematic thread
The Walking Dead & the Uncanny
The great ghost-fight: Grettir wrestles the draugr Glám in the dark, and though he wins, Glám's dying curse — a dread of the dark — fixes on him for life. The uncanny that even the strongest cannot fully beat.
Glámr walks
At Þórhallsstaðir a shepherd named Glámr — a big, surly, godless Swede — died on a haunted hillside one Yule and would not stay dead. He walked: rode the roofs by night, broke the doors, killed beasts and men and servants, until no one would stay on the farm and the whole valley lay under his terror. He was a draugr, the living dead, and the strongest dark thing in the sagas.[1]
Grettir, drawn by exactly the kind of challenge no one else would face, came to the farm and waited. He let Glámr break in and lay still under his cloak while the monster tore the hall apart — and then they grappled. It was the hardest wrestling of Grettir's life: through the wrecked hall, out into the night, neither able to throw the other, the strongest living man against the strongest dead one.[2]
The source text · 2
In the spring Thorhall got serving-men, and set up house at his farm; then the hauntings began to go off while the sun was at its height; and so things went on to midsummer. That summer a ship came out to Hunawater, wherein was a man named Thorgaut. He was an outlander of kin, big and stout, and two men's strength he had. He was unhired and single, and would fain do some work, for he was moneyless. Now Thorhall rode to the ship, and asked Thorgaut if he would work for him. Thorgaut said that might be, and moreover that he was not nice about work.— grettis saga
Glámr dies and walks as a draugr (Morris & Magnússon 1869).
Glam fared slowly when he came into the door and stretched himself high up under the roof, and turned looking along the hall, and laid his arms on the tie-beam, and glared inwards over the place. The farmer would not let himself be heard, for he deemed he had had enough in hearing himself what had gone on outside. Grettir lay quiet, and moved no whit; then Glam saw that some bundle lay on the seat, and therewith he stalked up the hall and griped at the wrapper wondrous hard; but Grettir set his foot against the beam, and moved in no wise; Glam pulled again much harder, but still the wrapper moved not at all; the third time he pulled with both hands so hard, that he drew Grettir upright from the seat; and now they tore the wrapper asunder between them.— grettis saga
The wrestling with Glámr through the hall.
Þórólfr Halt-Foot will not stay buried — the malevolent draugr walks, kills, and blights his whole district. Norse horror at its most relentless.
The walking of Þórólfr Halt-Foot
The saga's darkest figure is Þórólfr Bægifót — Halt-Foot — a cruel, grasping old man whose malice does not stop at death. When he dies, glaring and upright in his seat, they carry his body out through a hole broken in the wall, not the door, and bury him far off. It is not enough.[1]
He walks. The oxen that drew his corpse go mad; cattle near his howe bellow themselves to death; birds that light on the grave fall dead. A herdsman is found 'all coal-blue, and every bone in him broken.' Farms empty as the dead man strides the dale by night killing men, and all who die are afterwards seen in his ghastly company. Only near his son Arnkell does the haunting cease.[2] At last they dig him up — undecayed and hideous — drag him off behind foundering oxen, and wall his howe so high none but flying birds can cross it. He lies quiet, the saga says, as long as Arnkell lives.
The source text · 2
Now Snorri the Priest let work Crowness wood, and let much wood cutting go on. Thorolf Halt-foot thought that the wood was spoilt thereby, and rode out to Holyfell, and bade Snorri give back the wood, and said that he had lent the wood and not given it. Snorri said that would be clearer when they bore witness who were by at the handselling, and said that he would not give up the wood unless they gave it against him. Then Thorolf took himself off, and was in the worst of minds. He rode in to Lairstead to see his son Arnkel.— eyrbyggja saga
The death of Þórólfr Halt-Foot (Morris & Magnússon 1892).
After the death of Thorolf Halt-foot many folk deemed it worse to be abroad as soon as the sun was getting low. But as the summer wore, men were ware of this, that Thorolf lay not quiet, and men might never be in peace abroad after sunset. And this happed withal that those oxen which had been yoked to Thorolf were troll-ridden, and all such cattle as came nigh to Thorolf's howe went mad, and bellowed till they died. Now the herdsman at Hvamm often came home in such wise that Thorolf had given chase to him. And so it befell in the autumn at Hvamm that one day neither herdsman nor beasts came home; and in the morning men went to seek them, and found the herdsman dead, a little way from Thorolf's howe, and he was all coal-blue, and every bone in him was broken. He was buried beside Thorolf. And of all the cattle that had been in the dale, some were found dead, and some fled into the mountains, and were never found again; and if fowls settled on Thorolf's howe, they fell down dead.— eyrbyggja saga
Þórólfr walks; the coal-blue herdsman; the second burial.
And the strangest remedy: the hauntings of Fróðá ended by putting the walking dead on TRIAL — a door-court summoning the ghosts to leave, law applied to the supernatural. Only the Norse would sue a ghost.
The ghosts put on trial
And here Eyrbyggja does the thing no other saga does. To rid Fróðá of its dead, Snorri's son Kjartan and a priest do not fight the ghosts or exorcise them with prayer alone. They hold a door-doom — a formal lawsuit — and summon each of the walking dead by name, charging them with trespass on the living, and pronounce lawful judgement of outlawry against them.[1]
And it works. As each dead man is named and sentenced, he rises and goes, grumbling, out the door into the dark — 'I sat while sitting was good,' one says as he leaves — until the hall is cleared of them. Then a priest carries fire and holy water through the house to seal it. It is the most Eyrbyggja moment imaginable: in this district even the supernatural is subject to law, and a haunting is ended by correct legal procedure. The temple and the Thing of the first chapter have their answer to the dead.
The source text · 1
Now when those wonders had gone so far, one day Kiartan went east unto Holyfell to go see Snorri the Priest, his mother's brother, and asked rede of him what he should do in the matter of those wonders that had fallen on them. At that time was come to Holyfell the priest that Gizur the White had sent to Snorri the Priest. So Snorri sent the priest out to Frodis-water with Kiartan, as well as his son Thord Kausi, and six men more. Thereto he added the counsel to burn Thorgunna's bed-gear, and summon all those who walked, to a door-doom; and he bade the priest sing the hours there, and hallow water and shrive all folk. So these summoned men from the nighest steads on the road, and came to Frodis-water on the eve of Candlemas at such time as the meal-fires were lighted.— eyrbyggja saga
The door-doom: the dead summoned, charged, and outlawed (Morris & Magnússon 1892).
The tender face of it: the slain Helgi rides back from Valhöll to his grave-mound, and his widow climbs in to lie one last night in her dead husband's arms. The dead who return for love, not terror.
A last night in the grave
Helgi is laid in his burial-mound — but he does not stay quiet. One night he rides back from Valhöll to the howe, his wounds still bleeding, his hair thick with the frost of death. Sigrún's maid sees him and tells her mistress that the dead hero waits at the mound, that the wounds bleed and he bids Sigrún come and stanch them.[1]
And Sigrún goes. She climbs into the grave-mound to her dead husband, and there she makes a bed and lies the whole night in the arms of the dead Helgi, who tells her she is the cause that he is 'drenched in grief's dew' — that her weeping falls on him bloody each night before he sleeps.[2] They drink a last draught together though love and lands are lost.[3] At cockcrow Helgi must ride the reddening road back to the dead, and Sigrún is left in the empty mound. It is one of the most extraordinary scenes in early European literature — a love that reaches across death itself, the living woman lying in her dead lover's arms in his grave, tender and terrible at once. Soon after, Sigrún dies of grief, and the lay says that they were born again — Helgi and his valkyrie returning, once more, to find each other.
The source text · 3
"Go forth, Sigrun, / from Sevafjoll, / If fain the lord / of the folk wouldst find; / (The hill is open, / Helgi is come;) / The sword-tracks bleed; / the monarch bade / That thou his wounds / shouldst now make well."— helgi lays
Sigrún is told the dead Helgi waits at the mound (Bellows 1923).
Helgi spake: / "Thou alone, Sigrun / of Sevafjoll, / Art cause that Helgi / with dew is heavy; / Gold-decked maid, / thy tears are grievous, / (Sun-bright south-maid, / ere thou sleepest;) / Each falls like blood / on the hero's breast, / (Burned-out, cold, / and crushed with care.)— helgi lays
Helgi: Sigrún's weeping falls on him bloody — 'drenched in grief's dew' (Bellows 1923).
"Well shall we drink / a noble draught, / Though love and lands / are lost to me; / No man a song / of sorrow shall sing, / Though bleeding wounds / are on my breast; / / Now in the hill / our brides we hold, / The heroes' loves, / by their husbands dead."— helgi lays
they drink a last draught though love and lands are lost (Bellows 1923).
And the seeress raising the unseen: the völva's rite at the world's edge, singing the spirits near to read the future. The uncanny as something summoned and used, not only feared.
The seeress at the world's edge
One hard winter of dearth, with the fishing failed and a fever in the settlement, they sent for Þorbjörg, the 'little sybil' — last living of nine prophetess-sisters. The saga dresses her with extraordinary care, and it is the fullest portrait of a völva we have: a blue mantle inlaid with gems to the hem, glass beads, a black lambskin hood lined with ermine, catskin gloves white and furred within, a brass-knobbed staff, a pouch of talismans, and a ritual meal of the hearts of every kind of animal to be had.[1]
To work her seiðr she needed a woman who knew the weird-songs — and only Guðríðr did, taught them in Iceland by her foster-mother, though she protested she was a Christian and wanted no part in heathen rite. Pressed, she sang them, and so beautifully that the spirits drew near. The völva foretold the famine's end — and turned to Guðríðr with a destiny: a great and shining line of descendants would spring from her, though her path led back to Iceland.[2] Two faiths stand in one scene — the old magic and the new creed — in the body of one reluctant woman.
The source text · 2
Now, when she came in the evening, accompanied by the man who had been sent to meet her, she was dressed in such wise that she had a blue mantle over her, with strings for the neck, and it was inlaid with gems quite down to the skirt. On her neck she had glass beads. On her head she had a black hood of lambskin, lined with ermine. A staff she had in her hand, with a knob thereon; it was ornamented with brass, and inlaid with gems round about the knob. Around her she wore a girdle of soft hair, and therein was a large skin-bag, in which she kept the talismans needful to her in her wisdom. She wore hairy calf-skin shoes on her feet, with long and strong-looking thongs to them, and great knobs of latten at the ends. On her hands she had gloves of ermine-skin, and they were white and hairy within.— eiriks saga rauda
The völva's dress and seiðr-rite (Sephton 1880).
The spae-queen thanked her for the song. "Many spirits," said she, "have been present under its charm, and were pleased to listen to the song, who before would turn away from us, and grant us no such homage. And now are many things clear to me which before were hidden both from me and others. And I am able this to say, that the dearth will last no longer, the season improving as spring advances. The epidemic of fever which has long oppressed us will disappear quicker than we could have hoped. And thee, Gudrid, will I recompense straightway, for that aid of thine which has stood us in good stead; because thy destiny is now clear to me, and foreseen. Thou shalt make a match here in Greenland, a most honourable one, though it will not be a long-lived one for thee, because thy way lies out to Iceland; and there, shall arise from thee a line of descendants both numerous and goodly, and over the branches of thy family shall shine a bright ray. And so fare thee now well and happily, my daughter."— eiriks saga rauda
Guðríðr sings the weird-songs; her destiny foretold.
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