![]() This man was eventually burned at the stake as a witch. According to one legend, one man drove the revenant away using a mixture of herbs and his own semen. The Draugr is a virtually unstoppable monster, and possesses only a handful of weaknesses. They were also noted for the ability to rise from the grave as wisps of smoke. In some accounts, witnesses portray them as shapeshifters who take on the appearance of seaweed or moss-covered stones on the shoreline. Animals feeding near the grave of a draugr were often driven mad by the creature's influence. The draugar slew their victims through various methods including crushing them with their enlarged forms, devouring their flesh, and drinking their blood. Due to this trend, the term “draug” has come to be used in a more general sense in recent years to describe any type of revenant in Nordic folklore.Īll draugr possessed superhuman strength, the ability to increase their size at will with some immunity to usual weapons. This trait is common in the northernmost part of Norway, where life and culture was based on the fish, more than anywhere else.ĭraug sightings in modern times are not so common, but are still reported by reasonable and relatively sane individuals from time to time. In other tellings, the draug is described as being a headless fisherman, dressed in oilskins. In Scandinavian folklore, the creature is said to possess a distinctly human form said to be either hel-blar ("death black") or, conversely, na-folr ("corpse-pale"). In more recent folklore, the draug is often identified with the spirits of mariners drowned at sea. The notable difference between the two was that the haugbui was unable to leave its grave site and only attacked those that trespassed upon their territory. Up north, the tradition of sea-draugar is especially vivid.Īrne Garborg, on the other hand, describes land-draugar coming fresh from the graveyards, and the term draug is even used of Vampires, in Norway translated as "Bloodsucker-draugar". The connection between the draug and the sea can be traced back to the author Jonas Lie and the story-teller Regine Nordmann, as well as the drawings of Theodor Kittelsen, who spent some years living in Svolvær. In older literature one will find clear distinctions between Sea-draug and land-draug. Norwegian folklore records a number of different draug-types. The original Nordic meaning of the word Draugr (pronounced "droo-GORE") is ghost.
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