Saga Ghosts and the Door-Court at Fróðá: Sources and Corrections

In Eyrbyggja saga, written down in Iceland in the mid-1200s, the dead of the farm Fróðá were summoned to a door-court, charged with entering the house without leave, and walked out one by one as each verdict fell. Grettis saga tells of Glámr the shepherd and Kárr the Old in his mound. The sagas rarely call these figures draugr; their word is afturganga, one who walks again. This page gives the source for every slide.

Every factual claim in our carousel on the walking dead of the sagas, and in its caption, with its source. These are saga stories, written down centuries after the events they describe. Section numbers 01 to 05 match the number at the top of each slide; 07 to 10 are the later slides' places in the carousel. So the caption's "slide 2" is section 01 here, and "slide 6" is 05. The cover is an AI-generated illustration. The photographs in 01 to 04 and 07 are real, and 05 is an illustration from 1902; all are credited below.

How we cite. Grettis saga we read in the Icelandic text of Netútgáfan, which follows the Íslenzk fornrit edition (vol. VII, ed. Guðni Jónsson); English wording is G. A. Hight's translation, The Saga of Grettir the Strong (Everyman, 1914), whose chapter numbers match. Eyrbyggja saga we read in the Netútgáfan text, which follows Íslenzk fornrit IV (ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson); English wording is William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon, The Story of the Ere-Dwellers (The Saga Library 2, 1892), with their note on the door-court. Chapters are cited as numbered in the Netútgáfan texts. We did not see the Íslenzk fornrit volumes themselves. Landnámabók (Sturlubók) is also Netútgáfan. Word meanings come from Cleasby and Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary (1874). The modern reading is Ármann Jakobsson, The Troll Inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North (punctum books, 2017, open access); he is a professor at the University of Iceland. The date of Eyrbyggja saga follows the publisher's page for Forrest S. Scott's edition, Eyrbyggja saga: The Vellum Tradition (2003). We give no date for the writing of Grettis saga: scholars disagree. We did not read Ármann's 2011 JEGP article or Chadwick's "Norse Ghosts" (1946).

Slide by slide

Cover. "In the sagas, Iceland took its dead to court. The dead obeyed."

Eyrbyggja saga ch. 55: Fróðá summoned its dead "to a door-doom", and they left as sentenced; see 04. "In the sagas" is the point: one saga's account, written about 250 years after the events, not a recorded court case.

The picture is an AI-generated illustration made for this post, not a photograph and not a reconstruction of Fróðá. It imagines chapters 54 and 55: men in wet wool sitting on the benches either side of a long fire in a turf hall, living men standing by an open door onto falling snow, a young man among them speaking with one hand held out, and an older man walking away toward a dark side doorway. In the saga the dead sit by the fire, the court is set at one door, and the dead leave by the other.

01. The shepherd who walked again

Grettis saga ch. 32: Þórhallr's farm in Forsæludalur, above Vatnsdalur, was badly haunted. On the lawspeaker Skafti's advice he hired a shepherd, Glámr, whose family was from Sweden. He was to start at the Winter Nights; our sources page on the Winter Nights quotes that line. Glámr would not go to church. On Christmas Eve he demanded food against the fast, saying (our paraphrase) that he liked the old ways better, when men were called heathen. He went out with the sheep and was found dead after a storm, and since he could not be moved to the church, they buried him where he lay. Hence "mocked the Christmas fast and died on Christmas Eve. Buried out in the valley".

"he walked again and rode the farm roofs at night": tók Glámur að ríða húsum á nætur; Hight, "he began to ride on the house-tops". The saga adds, in ch. 33, that the hauntings lessened when the sun was highest and grew again in autumn. "Grettir waited for him, and as Glámr fell, the moon broke through onto his eyes": ch. 35, Grettir lay in wait for him in the house; in Hight, "At the moment when Glam fell the moon shone forth, and Glam turned his eyes up towards it".

Sources: Grettis saga ch. 32, 33 and 35, Netútgáfan; Hight ch. XXXII to XXXV. Photo: Christian Bickel, "Vatnsdalur 05", August 2007, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0 de. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows the scree slopes and crags of the mountain Vatnsdalsfjall in Vatnsdalur, in summer. It is the valley below Forsæludalur, not Forsæludalur or Glámr's farm.

02. Out through the wall, and walled in

Eyrbyggja saga ch. 33: Þórólfr died after a quarrel with his son Arnkell; in Morris, he "sat in his high-seat". Arnkell came up behind him, bade all beware of passing in front of him before his eyes were closed, then "let break down the wall behind him, and brought him out thereby": a hole in the wall, not the door. "Lame-foot" is his byname, bægifótr: Landnámabók says he was wounded in the foot in a duel og gekk haltur ávallt síðan; því var hann bægifótur kallaður, "and went lame ever after; so he was called bægifótr". Morris has "Halt-foot".

"When he walked anyway, they moved him to a headland behind a wall only a bird could cross." Ch. 34: buried in Þórsárdalur, he walked; Arnkell dug him up and found him undecayed (ófúinn), and buried him on a headland, with a wall across it, in Morris, "so high that none might come thereover but fowl flying, and there are yet signs thereof". That last clause is the saga's claim about its own day. It was called Bægifótshöfði after him.

Sources: Eyrbyggja saga ch. 33 and 34, Netútgáfan; Morris and Magnússon ch. XXXIII and XXXIV; Landnámabók, Sturlubók. Photo: Bromr, "Álftafjörður2010", July 2010, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows a flat-topped headland across calm water in Álftafjörður on Snæfellsnes, the district of Þórólfr's story. It is not identified as Bægifótshöfði.

03. The drowned came home for their wake

"The winter Iceland became Christian": Eyrbyggja ch. 50 opens Sumar það er kristni var í lög tekin á Íslandi, the summer Christianity was taken into law in Iceland, when the Hebridean woman Þórgunna came to Fróðá. That winter, ch. 54, the farmer Þóroddr went to fetch dried fish, and he and his crew were lost, in Morris, "off Enni"; the boat drifted ashore, the bodies were not found. "At his funeral feast he walked in with his crew, dripping wet, and sat by the fire": the feast was made from the household's Yule ale, and on its first evening "in came goodman Thorod and his fellows into the hall, all of them dripping wet", and sat down by the fire.

"People called it a good sign." Morris: men thought it "a good portent", since the drowned who came to their own wake were thought to have found good cheer with Rán, for "little of the olden lore was cast aside, though men were baptized". "Then they came back every night": every evening while the feast lasted, and on through Yule.

Sources: Eyrbyggja saga ch. 50 and 54, Netútgáfan; Morris and Magnússon ch. LIV. Photo: Michal Klajban, "Enni, Snæfellsnes, Iceland 01", via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped by us, with text added. Enni is the headland the saga says the boat was lost off.

04. So they sued the dead

"On a chieftain's advice they burned the dead woman's bedding and held a door-court." Dying, Þórgunna had ordered her bed and bed-hangings burned (ch. 51); the housewife Þuríðr would not have such treasures burned, and they were kept. In ch. 55 the chieftain Snorri goði advised burning them, and Kjartan summoned the dead, in Morris, "to a door-doom".

"The dead were charged with entering the house without leave": "that they went about that household without leave, and despoiled men both of life and luck". "and judged as at the Thing": "even as at a doom of the Thing: verdicts were delivered, cases summed up, and doom given".

"As each verdict fell, that ghost stood up and walked out." Each spoke a line as he went. Þórir viðleggr: "Here have I sat while sit I might"; the farmer Þóroddr, last: "Meseems little peace is here; so get us all gone otherwhere". They went out, in Morris, "by the door before which the court was not set". Then came holy water and mass, and the walking ended.

The door-court itself was real law, but not law against the dead. Morris and Magnússon call it "a special institution of Norwegian law; it is not mentioned in the Gragas", used "for the recovery of disputed debts"; Cleasby and Vigfusson define dyra-dómr as "a court at the door of the defendant". Landnámabók and Eyrbyggja ch. 18 have one held in Iceland against the living, by Þorbjörn digri over lost horses. Of that case the same editors write: "How a court of this description could be extended to the case here in question we are not informed." Ármann Jakobsson calls it "a sort of exorcism-by-law" (p. 81).

Sources: Eyrbyggja saga ch. 18, 51 and 55, Netútgáfan; Morris and Magnússon ch. LV and their note on the door-doom; Landnámabók; Cleasby-Vigfusson, under dómr; Ármann Jakobsson (2017), p. 81. Photo: EinarrMan, "Eiríksstaðir sarrera", August 2019, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows the timber doorway in the turf walls of the modern reconstruction of the Viking Age longhouse at Eiríksstaðir, in west Iceland. It is not Fróðá.

05. How the sagas stop the dead

"In a mound in Norway, Grettir wrestled Kárr the Old for his treasure". Grettis saga ch. 18: on Háramarsey, off Sunnmøre, Kárr had walked since his death until he drove off all the farmers, so that his son Þorfinnr owned the whole island. Grettir broke into the mound, found in Hight "a man seated" over gold and silver, and they wrestled. "cut off his head and set it at his backside": he struck off the mound-dweller's head with the sword Jökulsnautr, Setti hann það við þjó honum. Hight softens þjó to "between his thighs"; Ármann Jakobsson reads it as the buttocks (p. 89), and we follow him. "The saga never says why": neither saga gives a reason, and we give none.

"Glámr got the same, then fire." Ch. 35: the same words, setti þá við þjó honum; then they "burned Glam to cold cinders" and buried the ashes "far away from the haunts of man or beast". "Þórólfr was walled in": see 02; after Arnkell's death he walked again, and was dug up, burned, and his ashes swept into the sea (Eyrbyggja ch. 63). "the Fróðá dead were taken to court": see 04. Ármann lists the methods as "decapitation of corpse, burning of corpse, putting the face between the buttocks" (p. 193, n. 95).

Kárr is the one figure here the saga calls draugr, and only in a verse Grettir speaks: féll draugr, tekið haugi, roughly "the draugr fell, the mound was taken". In prose he is a haugbúi, mound-dweller.

Sources: Grettis saga ch. 17, 18 and 35, Netútgáfan; Hight ch. XVIII and XXXV; Eyrbyggja saga ch. 63; Ármann Jakobsson (2017), pp. 89 and 193. Illustration: Henry Justice Ford, plate facing p. 362 in Andrew Lang (ed.), The Book of Romance (1902), via Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows Grettir carrying a chest out of the mound with Kárr gripping him from behind. It is a 1902 book illustration, not a medieval image.

07. Would you sue the ghost, or burn the bedding? Comment below

Fróðá did both (see 04). "Know a saga ghost we got wrong? Send the chapter and we'll pin the correction." Corrections are listed below.

Photo: Smiley.toerist, "Drangey 2017 09", July 2017, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped by us, with text added. It shows hikers climbing the grass slope on top of Drangey, the island where Grettir made his last stand (ch. 82).

08. The sagas named people too

"Bynames were conferred rather than claimed", as the sources present them, though some men took on a name and some bynames were inherited. Þórólfr in 02 is the example: Landnámabók says he was called bægifótr because a duel left him lame. Others: Kárr hinn gamli, the Old, and Grettir hinn sterki, the Strong (ch. 93). Our free Viking name generator draws on given names and bynames attested in medieval sources.

09. A blade from the mound

"Grettir's best blade was a short sword that came out of Kárr's mound". Grettis saga ch. 18, in Hight: among the treasure was "a short sword, which he declared to be finer than any weapon which he had ever seen". It was Þorfinnr's family heirloom, "had never been out of" the family, and in ch. 20 Þorfinnr gave it to him: "Grettir kept it as long as he lived". "the one that ended Glámr": ch. 35, "He drew his short sword, cut off Glam's head". "The saga calls it Kársnautr": ch. 82, at Grettir's last fight on Drangey, Greip hann þá saxið Kársnaut. A sword name in -nautr names the thing it was got from (Cleasby-Vigfusson), so Kársnautr is roughly "Kárr's gift", not "Kárr's slayer".

"Ours is a seax, and we laser-engrave the words you choose." The blade on the slide is Damascus-pattern steel from our personalized Viking blades collection, laser-engraved AR SKAL RISA: Hávamál 58 and 59, ár skal rísa, "one must rise early". Stanza 59 is about the man with few workers, who must rise early to his own work. It is not a replica of Kársnautr. The saga does not describe that blade beyond calling it a sax.

10. A ring to keep

"Þórgunna, whose bedding haunted Fróðá, left one order for her gold ring: it should go to church with her." Eyrbyggja ch. 51: Gullhring á eg og hann skal fara til kirkju með mér; Morris, "A gold ring I have which shall go to church with me". She was buried at Skálholt, as she had asked.

"Ours is made to stay with you." The ring is our handmade Norse ornament sterling silver ring, with interlacing knotwork round the band: 925 sterling silver, made to order in your size. It is not a replica of Þórgunna's ring, which the saga does not describe.

Caption. The bedding, the wake, the court

"Eyrbyggja saga, written down in Iceland in the mid-1200s, tells it." Scott's publisher page: "The saga is thought to have been composed in the mid-13th century".

"The summer Iceland became Christian, a Hebridean woman named Þórgunna came to the farm of Fróðá. Dying, she ordered her fine bedding burned. It was kept." Ch. 50: ein kona suðureysk er Þórgunna hét, a woman from the Hebrides named Þórgunna; for the bedding, see 04.

"That autumn a "Moon of Weird" went withershins round the house, and the deaths began." Ch. 52: on the evening the bearers came home from her burial, a half-moon showed on the wall of the hall, in Morris "backward and withershins round about the house"; Þórir viðleggr called it urðarmána, the Moon of Weird, and said deaths would follow. It was the autumn of her death.

"Of the 30 people in the household that autumn, 18 died." Ch. 54, in Morris: "At harvest-tide there had been thirty serving-folk there, but eighteen were dead, and five fled away, and but seven were left."

"The door-court was a real Norwegian procedure for unpaid debts; we know of no other text that uses it on the dead." See 04. Its 1892 editors were puzzled that it was used even in a horse-theft case (ch. 18).

"The sagas rarely say draugr. They say afturganga: one who walks again." Ármann Jakobsson: Þórólfr and Glámr, among others, "are never referred to using this term in the respective sagas in which they appear" (p. 32). We searched both full texts: draugr for the dead appears only in Grettir's verse on Kárr (see 05). Cleasby and Vigfusson give aptr-ganga, from ganga aptr, to walk again: "a ghost, apparition, the French revenant", citing Grettis saga ch. 34 to 37 and Eyrbyggja ch. 34, 50 to 55 and 63.

"After Glámr, even Grettir, whom the saga calls the strongest man in Iceland, was afraid of the dark, and "Glámr-sight" became a saying for seeing things that are not there." Ch. 35, Hight: "he had become so frightened of the dark that he dared not go anywhere alone at night", and "men speak of "Glam's eyes" or "Glam visions" when things appear otherwise than as they are" (glámsýni). On strength, ch. 58 gives "the opinion of most people" that he was "the strongest man that had been in the land" since the strongmen of an earlier day; ch. 93 quotes Sturla the lawman that he was "the strongest man in the land of his age, and better able than any other to deal with spectres", afturgöngum in the Icelandic.

The rest of the caption repeats the cover and 01 to 05. The photo line credits Christian Bickel, Bromr, Michal Klajban, EinarrMan and Smiley.toerist, and H. J. Ford for the illustration; each file and licence is linked above.

What we do not claim

• That Icelanders took the dead to court as a matter of history. It is one saga's account.
• That the sagas call Glámr, Þórólfr or the Fróðá dead draugar. Only Kárr, in a verse.
• That the English word glamour comes from Glámr. The saga's own word is glámsýni.
• Any reason for setting the head at the buttocks. The sagas give none.
• That iron scissors, needles or a "corpse door" were Norse ways to stop the dead. None is in the sagas we read.
• That the Fróðá dead were warriors. A farmer, his crew and farm folk.
• That the drowned at their wake were a bad omen. The saga says a good one.
• That Kárr's mound was in Iceland. It was on Háramarsey, in Norway.
• That Glámr was a sorcerer or Þórgunna a witch. The sagas say neither.
• That Glámr was beheaded with Jökulsnautr. That was the Kárr fight; Glámr was the sax.
• A date for the writing of Grettis saga, or a year for the Glámr fight.
• That our seax copies Kársnautr, that our ring copies Þórgunna's, or that the cover shows Fróðá as it was.

Corrections

None yet. If you find an error, tell us, with a citation.

Frequently asked questions

What is a draugr?

Draugr is the Old Norse word for one of the walking dead, and draugur is still the ordinary Icelandic word for a ghost. The sagas themselves rarely use it. Grettis saga and Eyrbyggja saga call their walking dead afturganga, one who walks again; draugr appears only in a verse about Kárr the Old, the mound-dweller Grettir fought in Norway.

Did Icelanders really take ghosts to court?

In a saga, yes; as recorded history, no. Eyrbyggja saga, written in the mid-1200s, tells how the farm of Fróðá summoned its dead to a door-court around the year 1000, and each walked out as his verdict fell. The door-court was a real Norwegian procedure for recovering debts. No other text we know uses one against the dead.

What does afturganga mean?

Afturganga, Old Norse aptrganga, comes from ganga aptr, to walk again. Cleasby and Vigfusson gloss it as a ghost or apparition, the French revenant. It is the word the sagas use for Glámr, Þórólfr Lame-foot and the dead of Fróðá.

How did the sagas stop the dead?

Grettir cut off the heads of Kárr the Old and Glámr and set each at the buttocks; Glámr was then burned. Þórólfr Lame-foot was reburied behind a wall on a headland, and later burned, his ashes swept into the sea. At Fróðá the dead woman's bedding was burned and the dead were taken to court. The sagas never explain the head placement.

Who was Glámr in Grettis saga?

A Swedish shepherd on a haunted farm in Forsæludalur, above Vatnsdalur. He mocked the Christmas fast, died on Christmas Eve and walked again, riding the roofs at night until Grettir wrestled and beheaded him. Afterwards Grettir was afraid of the dark, and Glámr-sight became a saying for seeing things that are not there.