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Draugr
Burial Mounds
Danger Level: 6/10
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Abilities
Size ManipulationSuperhuman StrengthDark Magic
Lore & Legend
The Mound-Dweller
Icelandic sagas treat the draugr as a physically present corpse that walks, swells, and kills from inside its howe. Grettir fights Glam; other tales burn or behead the body to stop it. This is not a Greek shade: it has weight, stench, and legal aftermath.
The corpus is saga prose, not Eddic verse. Treasure-guarding is a motif; the terror is the neighbor who will not stay buried.
Primary Sources
“Grettir's saga and other Islendingasogur describe the draugr as a walking corpse of terrible strength, to be wrestled, beheaded, and burned.”