When someone dies, they leave this world, and depending on your beliefs they either move on, or are just gone. While all deaths are tragic, there are some that hit harder than others, such as murder or suicide. Some people die having left something unfinished. Often, we hear of the dead with unfinished business returning as ghosts. The concept of the dead returning as zombies is also well known. Though these cases lean more towards virus outbreak, or other direct means. There is one belief, born from Scandinavian Viking folklore, that combines the ghost and the zombie into a single entity. The gjenganger.
Gjenganger is a combination of the words “again,” “against,” or “towards” and the word “ganger” which means “foot,” or “walker.” It means “walking again,” or “walking after death.” This being is said to have an entirely corporeal form, with no ghost-like qualities, yet behaves as a vengeful spirit. The gjenganger is often motivated by revenge and is extremely vicious, returning from beyond the grave to wreak havoc and torment its family and friends. In Swedish folklore, the gjenganger (called gengångare) appears to be nearly identical to a living person.
The gjenganger attacks in the dead of night, while their intended victim is fast asleep. Their attack is as simple as a pinch, after which they flee the scene. The pinch isn’t so simple though. Once awake, the victim will find a blue spot on their skin where they were pinched. Sickness and death would follow soon after. It is believed that even the faintest touch from the gjenganger would cause your skin to rot and slough away as the infection would travel straight to the heart.
Many of the symptoms caused by the touch of the gjenganger have been explained away over the years, associating them to real-life diseases. After all, the sloughing of skin could just be necrotizing fasciitis, which occurs after an injury, or simple cut. The pinching based disease could be the first sign of cancer.
Fear of the gjenganger led people to take extreme precautions to make sure they remained in their graves. A tradition of poling stones or twigs (varp) would be used to mark a place where someone died. Any time you passed this place, you would need to throw another stone or twig on the varp to commemorate what had happened there. Sometimes this would bring a person luck, while not doing it could result in the opposite, bad luck and accidents.
As the Christian religion spread, the precautions turned to painting a cross (or other symbols) on the coffin. Crucifixes and Christian incantations would be used. Even the tradition of carrying a coffin three times around the church before it could be buried.
In Icelandic sagas, the gjenganger exists among the Grettis saga, Eyrbyggya saga, and The Saga of Eric the Red. In these tales, the gjenganger was a mortal creature, as illustrated by Grettir slaying the gjenganger Glámr with his sword.
Is the gjenganger real, and does it still walk the earth today? Some would say yes, what would you say?
Another interesting piece of folklore comes out of Ireland. The Sluagh, or “fairies gone wild.”
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