The contrast between the activeness and agency of the deceased in the earlier Íslendingasögur and the more subordinate role of the dead in the mythical sources and later Íslendingasögur will be the main theme of this chapter. Moreover, in some later fourteenth-century Íslendingasögur it is implied that restless corpses were made active by ‘unclean spirits’, possibly because the spirits invaded the dead bodies, thus suggesting a link with the phenomenon of demonic possession known in medieval Christianity. 1270–1400), the dead can be awakened against their will by various mythical beings such as heathen gods and goddesses, or witches using their skills to serve their own interests.

1270), and the somewhat later fornaldarsögur (also called Legendary sagas, written ca. 900) but available only in later manuscripts (ca.

In other, more mythical saga genres such as Eddic poetry, often thought to derive from the heathen period (ca. This idea fits well with the ghosts of the so-called Sagas of Icelanders, Íslendingasögur, which were written mainly in the thirteenth century, that is, over 200 years after Icelanders had adopted Christianity, but not with all ghosts in the saga literature. Behind this was presumably a belief in some kind of life power and vitality remained in the human body after death – “a pagan relic” (Vésteinn Ólason 2003, 167) that may have survived in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iceland (see also Caciola 1996 and on similar ideas in Finnic folklore Koski 2011, 94–97). Thus, activity after death was usually not a punishment for the deceased, but an expression of their wish to continue to participate in the society of the living. Byock 1982, 133 Vésteinn Ólason 2003, 161 Nedkvitne 2004, 38–43 Martin 2005, 75–80) the dead generally became restless of their own free and often malevolent will. These corporeal, physical revenants seem to have both malevolent and benevolent functions in sagas: they may give assistance and advice to people, but may also cause the living trouble and fear, as well as madness, disease, or death. The ghosts in sagas were not ethereal phantoms dressed in white, but dead people appearing to the living in their physical, recognizable and undecayed bodies. In this chapter the posthumously restless dead, or ‘ghosts’ of Old Icelandic saga literature will be discussed.

Harper by Gunnar K. A. Njalsson