Margt býr í þokunni : what dwells in the mist?
In this chapter, we examine beliefs, stories, and sightings of and about ghosts, both historical and contemporary, in order to argue that while many of the ghosts of Iceland’s past—the walking dead, those who have been summoned from death, as well as ghosts of nonhuman form—live on in the present, n...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | , |
| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
U.K., Bloomsbury Academic
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwsau/reader.action?docID=5997020&ppg=126 https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:58774 |
| Summary: | In this chapter, we examine beliefs, stories, and sightings of and about ghosts, both historical and contemporary, in order to argue that while many of the ghosts of Iceland’s past—the walking dead, those who have been summoned from death, as well as ghosts of nonhuman form—live on in the present, not all have survived and the cultural meaning of many has been transformed. In some cases, such transformation can be conceptualized as a form of adaptation to “the times.” Such transformation as a means of adaptation is conventionally associated with vampires, as Nina Auerbach (1995) has suggested. Ghosts, however, are in her view relatively changeless and dwell in an eternal realm (see discussion in Chapter 1). However, as we will demonstrate, Icelandic ghosts are not timeless but rather exhibit a fair degree of adaptability. We begin the chapter with a brief account of ghosts in other cultures, so that we may demonstrate by way of contrast what draugar are (and are not) and then outline why some draugar are resolutely Icelandic, inseparable from the mists and the land, and connected to all who do or have lived on the island. Having established the historical nature and categories of draugar, based on Icelandic myth and folklore, we move to a consideration of contemporary stories, beliefs, personal communication material, even websites, devoted to twenty-first-century draugar. We conclude that while modernity has brought Icelanders out of the dark, to connect today with draugar dwelling in the mist is, for an Icelander, to connect with her history and her land. In this sense, draugar are, and were, mirrors of the images that Icelanders have of themselves, and of their land: awesome, threatening, beautiful, and sometimes deadly dark. |
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