Draug

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For the Norwegian role playing game of the same name, see Draug (role-playing game).

An artist's rendition of the draug

The draug is a sinister, malevolent being of Nordic origin, often linked to legends of the Icelandic draugr. The original norse meaning of the word is ghost, and on older literature one will find clear distinctions between Sea-draug and land-draug. A recorded legend from Trøndelag tells how a corpse lying on a beach became the object of a quarrel between the two types of Draug. A similar source even tells of a third type, the gleip, known to hitch themselves to sailors walking ashore and making them slip on the wet rocks. Norwegian folklore thus records a number of different draug-types.

In more recent folklore, the Draug is often identified with the spirits of mariners drowned at sea. In Scandinavian folklore, the creature is said to possess a distinctly human form, with the exception that its head is composed entirely of seaweed. In other tellings, the draug is described as being a headless fisherman, dressed in oilskins. This trait ie common in the northernmost part of Norway, where life and culture was based on the fish, more than anywhere else.

The creature is said to either swim alongside boats or sail around them in a partially submerged vessel, always on their own. In some accounts, witnesses portray them as shapeshifters who take on the appearance of seaweed or moss-covered stones on the shoreline. As legend has it, any mariner who treads upon such a stone faces certain death, unless he should happen to spit on it first.^{[citation needed]}

Draugs are sometimes referred to as ghosts, but are more commonly described as “living dead persons;“ a water-bound zombie of sorts. Having been denied proper burial, they haunt the shores of Norway and Iceland, and their mere appearance or deafening shriek is rumored to be an omen of impending disaster, tragedy or death. They are usually seen only by their future victims, and often appear moments before that person’s death, but rarely kill or cause death themselves. Occasionally, however, stories tell of sailors persauded into taking stones - draugs in disguise - onto their ships. Once aboard, the draugs shift back into sub-human form, and the resulting weight causes the boat to capsize, killing everyone aboard.

A draug aboard a ship, in sub-human form, wearing oilskins

But, though the draug usually presages death, there is an amusing account in Nord-Norge of a Nordlending who managed to outwit him:

It was Christmas Eve, and Ola went down to his boathouse to get the keg of brandy he had bought for the holidays. When he got in, he noticed a draug sitting on the keg, staring out to sea. Ola, with great presence of mind and great bravery (it might not be amiss to state that he already had done some drinking), tiptoed up behind the draug and struck him sharply in the small of the back, so that he went flying out through the window, with sparks hissing around him as he hit the water. Ola knew he had no time to lose, so he set off at a great rate, running through the churchyard which lay between his home and the boathouse. As he ran, he cried, "Up, all you Christian souls, and help me!" Then he heard the sound of fighting between the ghosts and the draug, who were battling each other with coffin boards and bunches of seaweed. The next morning, when people came to church, the whole yard was strewn with coffin covers, boat boards, and seaweed. After the fight, which the ghosts won, the draug never came back to that district.

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The connection between the draug and the sea can be traced back to the author Jonas Lie and the story-teller Regine Nordmann, as well as the drawings of Theodor Kittelsen, who spent some years living in Svolvær. Up north, the tradition of sea-draugs is especially vivid.

Arne Garborg, on the other hand, describes land-draugs coming fresh from the graveyards, and the term Draug is even used of Vampires, in Norway translated as "Bloodsucker-draugs". In this sense, the draug is an undead.

Draug sightings in modern times are not so common, but are still reported by reasonable and relatively sane individuals from time to time. Due to this trend, the term “draug” has come to be used in a more general sense in recent years to describe any type of revenant in Nordic folklore.

The Norwegian municipality of Bø has the half boat of draugen in its coat-of-arms.