Product Code Database
In Nordic folklore; , , ("(a)gain-walker"), among more, is a term for a revenant or ghost, meaning "someone which goes again", from the Scandinavian verb of "going again" (, ) in the sense, of a deceased person haunting post-mortem; compare ("Re-walker").
Other forms include: , , stemming from ("re-walker"); , ("again-travel or after-journey").
The Norwegian form attergangar means the same but uses the prefix atter (compare ), meaning roughly "re-", but also "again", "once (again)" (), "back" etc; thus meaning "re-walker", which is also found as a root-cognate in and .
The forms, , , switches the suffix for , , "travel, journey, trip", related to "fare", "ferry" etc.
The gjenganger in the Scandinavian tradition took on an entirely Human body form. It normally had no spectre-like qualities whatsoever. In older traditions, the gjenganger was very malicious and violent in nature, coming back from the grave to torment its family and friends. Their relatives took extensive precautions to make sure they stayed in their graves.
This tradition of the violent gjenganger goes back to the Viking Age, where they are present in many of the Icelandic sagas, among others: Grettis saga, Eyrbyggja saga and The Saga of Eric the Red. In this tradition, the gjenganger was a mortal creature. An example of this is Grettir slaying the gjenganger Glámr with his sword. These Viking-age gjengangere were often called draugr, and the two are likely to be different names for the same phenomenon.
The tradition of a pile of stones or twigs ( varp) often marked a place where someone has died. It was believed that when you passed this place, you should throw another stone/twig on the varp, to commemorate what had happened there. Doing so would sometimes bring luck on your further travels, while not doing so would result in bad luck and dangerous accidents. Many of these varps have now disappeared, but in a few places the varp is marked with a sign or something similar.
In later Swedish folklore, a distinction is made between the traditional gjenganger, in Swedish called gengångare, and another type of ghost known as gast. Whereas the gengångare looked virtually identical to a living human, the gast was known to be transparent and/or skeletal in appearance, making it impossible to see who the phantom had been while alive. And whereas the Swedish version of the gengångare were usually said to be rather harmless, it was the gast who was known to cause diseases. They were also known to cause accidents and scare people for no apparent reason other than that they enjoyed doing so.
Today it mostly compares with the modern perception of ghosts, most often being ethereal in form, and non-violent in nature. The word gjenganger is being used less, the contemporary word ghost ( spøkelse) having mostly taken over. Where the term gjenganger does occur, it may be treated simply as a synonym for ghost. The corresponding verbal phrase walk again ( gå igjen) is just one way of saying "haunt" with reference to ghosts.
|
|
