more agile still.
When they struck, their blows fell with
the brawn and weight of two men or more. Nor were
they witless foes; like wily reavers, they sought to snatch
our weapons from us and use them against us.
Yet in the end, we few who survived served them the
same way as before. They lay dismembered around us.
Then I faced Torstein nose to nose and demanded again
that the bodies of the draugar and all slain by them
should be beheaded, and Hjartarson should give the
remains proper burial rites ere we burned them to ash-
es in a great pyre—and the missionary should then give
proper burial rites to the ashes.
“If we do this not,” I told him, “the draugar will rise
again. And again. And soon, there will not be enough
of us left alive to defeat them, and they will wander the
lands of the BlackAxe, and those among them who were
of our army will seek their homes and loved ones, strid-
ing dead though they are, and it will be as ill to our loved
kin and neighbours as if we had lost to Grimr the Stout
in the first place. The draugar will hold sway over all
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these lands, and the living will fear and stay away. Is that
what you want? Or will you do as I ask, this time?”
And Torstein Gold-Beard looked at me in silence. And
then nodded.
pl
“Do it,” he said grimly, and turned away.
Draugar Myth
m
The dead of the Sword Age know no rest. Hel’s realm
is closed, and so—if unclaimed by Valkyries—bodies
rise again as Draugar. The Draugar are Hel’s agents,
although the wandering dead may know nothing of this
imposed allegiance. Most Draugar, when newly un-
earthed, forget their dead state and attempt to return
Sa
to the routines of their life. Dead farmers return to hoe
the snowy fields of Fimbulwinter. Dead wives come
home to clean and prepare a meal for guests. Drowned
fishermen crawl back to shore and home, to warm their
bodies by the fire.
Complicated rituals exist to prevent a loved one’s body
returning home, such as confusing the corpse’s sense
of direction by blindfolding and spinning it, or ham-
pering its walk back to its living home by tying its toes
together or driving spikes through the soles of its feet.
Yet, they usually find their way home.
To confront one is dangerous. Confused in death,
Draugar react with violence, and sometimes with fan-
tastic powers. They may carry with them an aura of
bad-luck, disease, life-sucking sickness and temporary
darkness—enough to confuse the daylight when the sun
is above, but not enough to blot out fire. Hrapp could
vanish beneath any ground similar to his grave soil and
swim through it. Thorolf Half-Foot was so heavy as a
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Draugar that his defeated body needed to be lifted by
levers. Glamr gained such potent magic that he success-
fully cursed the great hero Grettir to be “unable to be-
come any stronger.” Other Draugar could shapechange
fil
into dead animals, like a wounded seal, a flayed bull, or
a horse with a broken back and no ears, such as Thrain
who shapechanged into a decaying cat-like creature
and sat on a man’s chest growing ever-heavier until he
was crushed.
The walking dead are a frayed thread on the tapestry
of the Norns. The otherwise noble hero Glamr, work-
ing as a shepherd one night, was assaulted and his neck
broken by a Draugar, and rose the next night as a Drau-
gar himself. Dead men are not meant to kill the living,
and any warrior killed by Draugar are kinked from the
Norns’ tapestry, and more likely themselves to be re-
jected by Hel.
Much care must be taken in disposing of a Draugar.
Improperly destroyed, they can become even more
dangerous, such as the case of one beheaded Draugar
thrown into the sea with its body unburned; it returned
the next full moon with a head made from seaweed, im-
mune to decapitation. A cremated body can never be-
come a Draugar, but the followers of the White God do
not believe in cremation—especially with the woods of
Fimbulwinter becoming scarce—so the rise of Draugar
is more common among their kind.
There are some stories of noble Draugar who guard
their descendants and their lineage from a safe dis-
tance, but this certainly must be a change of heart upon
death, for if they were that noble in life they would have
at least been accepted into Niflheim.
Once all the relevant people the Draugar knew in their
life are dead as well, and the places they knew have suf-
48
 ficiently changed, the Draugar begin to wander. They
eventually fall into bands of similarly wandering corps-
es. Powerful Draugar called Aptragangr command
these regiments. They are the elite of Hel’s armies, and
often were Angels of Death when they lived.
Thus dead, damned, well-wandered, enlisted, and
armed, the Draugar march across the realms doing
Hel’s bidding, never again knowing rest.
Further Reading
• Eyrbyggja saga
• Frithiof’s Saga
• Grettis saga Asmundarsonar
• Hromundar saga Gripssonar
• Laxdæla saga
• Njals saga
• Prose Edda
Draugar Lore
e Habits
pl
Description
Dead bodies walk Midgard as Draugar, baked in mud
m
and caked-on grave dirt. Fresh Draugar may be nearly
indistinguishable from their former living selves except
for their eyes. These glow blue and reflect retained in-
telligence and memories from their former life and the
spiritual horrors of the grave. The body does not rot,
but it is twice as heavy or more than it was in life, and
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soon the skin takes on a deathly colour: black, death-
blue or deep maroon. These dead are able to speak and
somewhat reason, but with a kind of madness, as key
personality traits held in life are magnified in death. Be-
ing the kind of ignoble mortals that Hel would refuse
in her dominion, the Draugar are usually motivated by
jealousy of the living.
Environment
For a time the Draugar attempt to re-enter their home
from life, but eventually they wander Midgard. A Drau-
49
gar may not at first realise it, but they are Hel’s servants
in the lands of the living. Hel is patient. It may take years
of wandering for Draugar to find each other and form a
regiment. Then they are tasked by Hel or her agents as
soldiers, guards, or to act as a messenger or negotiator
with the living. All of these rarely involve the Draugar
being in one place long. They know no rest in death,
and also no home.
e
Vulnerabilities
• Must obey any commands given to them by Hel or
higher ranking Draugar or Aptragangr
fil
• Can only enter a dwelling where it once lived by the
method of egress they last used
• To be destroyed they must be decapitated, then
very soon burned to ash and thrown in the sea, or
proper burial rights immediately re-enacted
Better-known habits
• Only iron can injure, but is insufficient to kill
• Exceptionally fast and agile
• Supernatural strength
• Insatiable appetite for food and drink, even if it
passes through them
Lesser-known habits
• Not vulnerable to light or especially to fire
• Body can increase in size to double or more, its
weight increasing proportionately
• Enjoy chasing their victims to exhaustion and let-
ting the run kill them
• The powerful among them carry arms and armour
made of “Death Bone”, the realm ore of Niflheim;
an unholy metal they can sense from nearly any-
where
Nearly-unknown habits
• Enter the dreams of the living to torment them
• When summoned by a recognised local authority,
the Draugar is compelled to present itself and be
judged
 Dvergar
Dvergar Tale
It was all the talk in Byrgisborg.
Even the fearful went to look, for though the cobbled
town was bustling and wealthy, and larger and more
crowded every year, it was the odd and frightening
that caught interest. Like everywhere else.
And fearful the townfolk were, some saying Nidhogg
was gnawing away the earth beneath Byrgisborg, and
his curse was upon this place for its tall houses and
ready gold, and all were doomed!
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Yet Ragnhild Sturladottir, for all that she saw but lit-
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m
Sa
50
tle of that gold, living on weak soup and weaker stews
as her eyesight faded over ever-busy needles as she
sewed and washed for grander folk, decided she’d
see for herself and make up her own mind about the
curse. Even before the hut of her best friend, Adisla
fell into the pit, joining three grand houses already
down there—and Adisla with it.
It had begun with the home of Hersteinn the jeweler,
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one of the richest men in Byrgisborg. All his wealth
couldn’t stop his tall new house sagging down into
the dark unknown one morning, when a great gulf
opened in his yard and swallowed his squealing pigs,
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then his fine horses and their stable, and then Her-
steinn’s kitchens. The rest of the house toppled into
a pit growing swiftly wider and darker. By the time
they called Hersteinn home from his important deal-
ings, the house of his rival Oddmarr, the furs trader,
had fallen to join his, and half the next house too.
It was now a river of cracked stone rubble sliding
down into yawning—and growing, as they cursed and
stared disbelieving—darkness.
By nightfall the swallowing pit had reached into the
 much meaner street behind the grand lane of Her-
steinn and Oddmarr and the goldsmiths; the narrow-
er, muddier way where Ragnhild and Adisla and Old
Skjalg dwelt. It dragged down the little leaning hut
where Adisla mixed cures and hair-dyes, and made
dressings and special broths for the sick. The house
beside hers, too, though its folk had time to flee
where sleeping Adisla did not.
And in the chill morn, the loudest swaggering men
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51
of Byrgisborg, retired warriors Galmr the Strong and
Rolfr, took swords and ropes and lanterns, and gath-
ered young men who were hungry for adventure, and
went down into the pit.
And came not out again, all that day, nor most of the
next, ere the town decided grimly that they’d never
be seen again. While the pit swallowed two more
houses, both empty, for by now fear emptied houses
faster than they could be swallowed.
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fil
 Then the wealthy trader Hromundr Foxbeard, who had
in younger days been a raider of ruthless reputation,
took his bodyguards and some men who owed him coin
and could not well refuse, and fared down into the pit
with many ropes and much wary care.
And came back up before nightfall with word that Galmr
and Rolfr and all who’d gone with them were dead, in
the many traps that laid waiting down in the depths.
It was not some tunnel gnawed by Nidhogg, but a vast
warren of caverns, some natural and others hewn out of
the rock long ago.
The gates of Niflheim, some whispered; the lair of who
knew what, others hissed fearfully, but it was clear that
even in the likes of Hromundr interest in delving had
waned. The pit’s hunger to swallow ever more of Byr-
gisborg seemed to have waned, too. Now the talk turned
to cost, and inconvenience, and what sort of fencing
should be put up to keep children and dogs from the
traps the Foxbeard warned still lay waiting below.
Ragnhild’s home was six houses away from the pit, but
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Adisla had been her only friend in the world. So when
she heard even the Foxbeard had no intention of going
back down into the depths, Ragnhild went into her little
house, shut the door, and set to work.
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No one watched the pit that night, for it rained, and folk
bided within. No serpents of Nidhogg nor fell beasts of
Niflheim had come marauding up out of it to menace
Byrgisborg, so what was the need? So no one saw the
short, fat hooded stranger who clanked at every step
trudge to the pit with a shepherd’s crook in hand. The
m
stranger unwound a great amount of poorly-knotted,
varying lengths of old rope from around its waist, se-
cured one end of that clumsy line around a post of Val-
brandr Dolluson the spice merchant’s back porch, then
clambered with the unwinding line down into the pit.
Old Bersi the Craven claimed to have seen all this later,
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but he was a notorious drunkard and folk believed him
not.
It was dark, down in the pit, and the rubble of the fallen
houses shifted underfoot, but the stranger clambered
away from that to where there was solid rock underfoot.
There the stranger took off the hooded cloak, and then
the rest of its stoutness, which had been half rope and
half many lanterns all strapped to her.
When the lamps were all freed, Ragnhild Sturladottir
was her slender, birdlike self again, and only one lan-
tern had broken. She lit the rest, then snuffed all but
two out again, slung the four she could manage at her
belt, took crook in hand, and went into the caves.
Their dark mouths yawned around her, but she chose
one she’d heard a faint, far-off sound coming from, a
brief ring of metal striking stone. And she held her lan-
terns high and kept to one wall and went very warily,
for she was less than eager to taste the traps that killed
many men and made the Foxbeard shun this place.
Galmr she found first, then two men of the town whose
names she knew not, crushed and very dead in traps
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where a stone shifting underfoot had brought great
rock slabs crashing down from above. She stood a long
time peering at these before she went on, even more
slowly and carefully.
fil
Rolfr had been dashed senseless by swinging stones
and fallen into a pool of water and drowned. Here, too,
she stopped to look at the clever wedges of stone that
had made up that trap ere she went on more slowly still,
every step wary.
Twice she thought she found traps yet unsprung, and
saw ways a small, short person could worm past them,
so she did that, faring unscathed until she was past all
places of worked stone into a great cavern of stone
fangs and dripping water, a natural cave.
Where she heard again noises far ahead, and this time
murmurs that must be voices. She shuttered her best
lantern and piled stones over it until not even a glow
showed, blew out the rest, and crawled on, from fang to
fang, hard to the stone wall on her left hand, taking the
greatest care to make no sound.
The voices ahead were gruff, and male—but no men of
Byrgisborg. Ragnhild crawled closer.
Light glimmered, paler lanterns than hers, and she
crawled as silent as any ghost, until she beheld—Adis-
la’s best chair!
“Good carving on this,” its holder said. “Too good for
a human, almost.”
He looked like a stout old man with an overlarge nose
and beard to match, skin the hue of ash and dirt, with a
belly as big as two winesacks.
“Ah, but look at this!” said another, and held up a
painting Ragnhild knew well had graced the front hall
of Oddmarr the trader—though that hall was all of his
grand house she’d ever seen. “The humans have some
good things.”
There were six lookalike longbearded not-humans that
Ragnhild could see. A third growled, “Grubbing after
them isn’t worth the peril of leaving open a way that
52
 they can and will come down again, into our abode, if I
know anything about humans!”
“After our treasure?”
“Not yet. They don’t know of it yet. But they will, once
they do—and how can they not? Then they’ll come in a
great flood. Humans always do.”
“They did not tunnel seeking us, that I can tell. I think
they were enlarging their cellars, out of greed and
need.”
“Yet break through they did,” said the one with Adisla’s
chair. “So we must build many new traps, and prepare
props and a new roof that we can rush into place when
there is no sunlight, and so close the way again, and
keep the humans out.”
“Bah!” said he of the painting. “Take time away from
our forges for that? The humans are too craven to come
down again, after all these dead! Look around! Do you
see any?”
“Well,” said Ragnhild, standing up and stepping out of
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the gloom into their lamplight, “there’s me.”
The not-humans all hissed, snatched hammers from
their belts, and rushed at her, but the one who’d had
the chair stopped, flung up an arm, and bellowed, “It’s
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a girl!”
“Woman,” Ragnhild corrected.
“Are you alone?” snapped the one who’d held the paint-
ing.
“I am, and unarmed,” she replied. “Who are you?”
m
“Smiths!”
“Crafters better than all others!”
“Children of Ymir!”
“Dvergar!”
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They all spoke at once, making her ears ring, but Rag-
nhild heard ‘Dvergar’ and sang a snatch of something
her grandmother had sung to her in her cradle:
Dvergar, the clever ones, forge even the locks of this
hall
Treasure so bright
Agleam in the night
Dvergar have made it all
“Well, now!” said the dvergar of the chair, lowering his
hammer. “That’s nicer than I’ve heard from humans in
a while!”
53
“She knows of our treasure,” another dvergar warned,
“and can tell. There’s a whole town of humans above
our heads.”
“She’s beautiful,” said a third, and Ragnhild was so as-
tonished she blurted, “You think so?”
“She is,” agreed a fourth, “though not as beautiful as
the bowls I make.”
“Hah! Your bowls sing not! Lady, why come you here?”
e
“I seek my friend, whose home fell in here. A woman a
little taller than me, Adisla. You have her chair there.”
“Oh. That one lives still, though we’d have to dig her
fil
out. Her house is wrapped around her.”
“If we do nothing, she’ll die of hunger and thirst. They
always do.”
“If you let me go, with her,” Ragnhild told them, “I
promise I’ll tell all Byrgisborg of the traps down here—
so many traps, more than one for every Byrgisborger—
but not of you or your treasure.”
“And if we do not let you go?”
“Then I’ll fight to get free and help my friend, and die if
I must. What else?”
“I like her,” said the dvergar of the chair. “Give us an-
other song, lady, and let us trade coins and spit on our
hands and shake on it. And a deal is a deal.”
And Ragnhild took out the lone silver coin she had in
her belt-purse, admitting she had no gold to her name,
and the dvergar of the chair replaced the gold coin
gleaming in his palm with a coin of silver to match hers
so swift and deft it seemed like magic, and they spat and
shook.
“A deal is a deal,” Ragnhild echoed, and they all smiled,
and it was.
Dvergar Myth
The Dvergar came into being as maggots feasting on
the dead body of the primordial being Ymir. The Aesir
gifted them with reason and molded them into a hu-
man-like shape, but stout and ugly.
The elusive and gruff Dvergar are perhaps best known
for their hoards of great treasures built up over many