Medieval Ghost Stories

by Andrew Joynes

  On another occasion a visitor turned up at the house unexpectedly, much to the consternation of the host, who had nothing to offer him. Reyneke said: ‘Do not worry, I have enough to give him,’ and immediately he prepared a bountiful spread of full-wheat bread, fine wine, good beer, roast and boiled meat and made it available to his host.

  Reyneke had no love for his host’s elderly mother, about whom he used to say: ‘That woman is evil.’ But he cared greatly for one of the household servants, a young girl called Styneken. One day Herman de Scardenbergh, another servant who was a particular friend of Reyneke, gave this girl an apple. Reyneke took offence at this, and told him not to do it again. When Herman protested that he had only given her an apple, Reyneke said: ‘I am fully aware of that, but you had a great deal more in mind!’ He assured another man, to whom he was also well-disposed, that he would in due course make him rich so that he could marry Styneken …

  Source: Re-told from the Latin in Liber de Rebus Memorabilioribus sive Chronicon Heinrici de Hervordia, ed. A. Potthast, Göttingen 1859, p. 279.

  Part Three

  The Restless Dead

  Introduction

  The word ‘revenant’ can have both a precise and a general meaning, In French it is the common term for a ghost, with its derivation from the verb revenir, ‘to return’, carrying the notion of the unexpected interruption of a journey on which the spirit has embarked at death. But in the context of medieval accounts of ghostly occurrences, it would be useful to use the term in a more specific fashion, and to apply it to those corporeal ghosts of Scandinavian and Northern European legend whose return has an insistent, repetitive, threatening nature. In these stories, the basic theme is of a return, not merely from death, but from a place of alienation and exile. In some cases the monstrous revenants return to make their nightly assaults on dwelling-places which were once their homes, where their families and former friends still live. In this specific sense, therefore, revenants are dead people who come back in a recognisable physical form, but profoundly altered in that, for the most part, they are now enemies of the living.

  The Icelandic term for such a ghost is draugr, and it was in Iceland, in the centuries that followed the country’s conversion to Christianity in the year 1000, that heroic and family sagas were written down for the first time.1 These written accounts, compiled by Icelandic Christian authors raised in a tradition of literacy and pride in antiquarian research, drew heavily on the Germanic beliefs and legends which formed the basis of pre-Christian Scandinavian culture. In a number of the sagas, a draugr features prominently as an opponent of the hero of the narrative; its marauding activities provide scope for much dark detail on the part of the chroniclers, and the circumstances of its defeat allow for an affirmation of the physical strength and courage of the hero.2 But stories of such revenants are not confined to Icelandic literature and the period of the sagas. As we shall see from the extracts that follow, these corporeal ghosts are to be encountered looming out of the darkness in Britain and Denmark in Anglo-Saxon and Latin manuscripts dating from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. The monstrous presence of these revenants in poems, chronicles and compilations written by medieval Christian scholars (and, it should be noted, the similarity between the scholars’ accounts of their depredations) may demonstrate the persistence of pre-Christian belief in the popular culture of Northern Europe during the Middle Ages.

  It is useful, for instance, to compare the nightstalker Grendel, from the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, with Glam, the sinister draugr in the Icelandic Grettis Saga of the fourteenth century. The similarities between the two have often been noted; the Anglo-Saxon poet and the Icelandic author depict them as the key enemies of their respective heroes, and before their defeats they both seem to have a monstrous towering presence as they stride beneath the clouds on their nightly raids upon the living. Scholars have pointed out that the description of the way the moonlight glitters on the pale eyes of Grendel as he confronts Beowulf (‘from his eyes there came a horrible light, most like a flame’) is a ‘characteristic’ image which is developed to describe Glam in his moment of defeat by Grettir (‘at the moment when Glam fell, the moon shone forth, and he turned his eyes up towards it’).3 Both creatures threaten the very fabric of the buildings which they assail, tearing down doors and roof timbers, and until they are taken by surprise by the heroes waiting within, they behave in an arrogant and proprietorial fashion. The supernatural outcast Grendel standing invincible on the patterned floor of Hrothgar’s mead-hall, and the ghost of the ‘thrall’ Glam resting his arm on the crossbeam of his former master’s dwelling-place, are remarkably similar figures, who may have had their origins in some ancient Germanic belief in predatory revenant ghosts who threaten the prosperity of living communities by subverting the sources of authority.

  The twelfth-century Yorkshire canon William of Newburgh asserted that the Prodigiosa which he described – the unnatural marvels which resulted in dead men returning to animate existence – were unique to his own time. Yet his descriptions of the activities of ghosts in Buckinghamshire, Yorkshire and Scotland are virtually identical with Scandinavian accounts of dead men who leave their tombs and stagger around on the margins of life. He even has an anecdote about what he describes in Latin as a sanguisuga, a vampire or blood-sucking ghost. In this respect, William of Newburgh’s Ghost of Anant resembles, in its nightly return to prey on the flesh of living men, the behaviour of the dead Asvith in the Danish histories of Saxo Grammaticus, a contemporary of William who, by his own admission, drew upon the legends of former times.

  What is perhaps most remarkable about the ghost stories in this section is the extent to which they differ in their overall tone from the neat narrative constructions of monastic Miracula. The ghosts and apparitions which are described in the first section of this book often seem to have been fashioned to accord with the monastic vision itself, in order to uphold and exemplify the moral teaching of the church. By contrast, these restless dead and Prodigiosa of the Scandinavian tradition frequently seem to have an autonomous cultural existence of their own, with the Christian writers providing merely a dutiful theological ‘gloss’ on the narrative. Thus, the Beowulfpoet suggests that Grendel is part of the accursed lineage of Cain, and William of Newburgh links the nightly emergence of the Berwick Ghost to the prompting of Satan, despite the fact that both Grendel and the monster of Berwick have ‘classic’ draugr characteristics. Even the fourteenth-century Monk of Byland, who may have set out to record local stories about ghosts in order to compile a series of exemplary accounts of apparitions in the Cistercian tradition, ends up describing many of the traits of ghosts from the Scandinavian tradition, preserved perhaps in the folklore of a region of Britain subject to Danish and Viking influence centuries before.

  Indeed, one can go further and suggest that, in a number of these stories of revenants and the restless dead – in William of Newburgh’s accounts, for instance, and in some of the Monk of Byland’s fragmentary tales – the traditional responses of the church to the hauntings are ineffective by comparison with the decisive action of laymen who open up the tomb to which the draugr retires each night and burn and scatter the ashes of the cadaver. In Iceland, where pre-Christian beliefs and practices continued long after the introduction of Christianity, the churchmen whose help was sought by communities afflicted by revenants often seem to have responded pragmatically and in accordance with long-standing local custom. In the Eyrbyggja Saga, the landholder and priest Arnkel builds a high wall, perhaps a symbolic delineation of the boundary between the dead and the living, around the grave to which he has removed the body of Thorolf Halt-Foot. Later in the same saga, at the end of the sequence of chapters dealing with the hauntings at Frodis-water, Snorri the Priest advises the community to use an ancient legal device, the ‘door-court’, to arraign and banish the ghosts (admittedly the Frodis-water ghosts are a somewhat more amenable group than Thorolf and his wild hunt of local murder victims, and seem
to accept that the rule of custom law applies to the dead as well as the living).

  Above all, perhaps, it is the consistency of these stories of the restless dead that indicates the influence of pre-Christian belief even upon narratives compiled by chroniclers of the Christian era. There are many common themes in the stories.4 The individual who becomes a draugr after death is frequently depicted as being alienated in some way from the community even when still alive. The tomb is the domain of the dead, to which the ghosts stumblingly return at dawn if they are wandering revenants, and where barrow-dwelling spirits assault the living. There is often something elemental about the ghosts’ behaviour: they consort with and madden cattle, and, like the winter storms, they batter the roofs of dwelling-places. When the draugr is vanquished – sometimes by main force in a wrestling-match with a hero who decapitates it, sometimes by sturdy members of the community who dig up and dispose of its body – the defeat is confirmed and reinforced by rituals such as the placing of the decapitated head between the knees, the opening of a tomb and the burning of the body (one might see many of these stories as implying a cultural tension between the ancient practices of burial and cremation) and the scattering of the ashes in a wild place or at sea. In the Scandinavian traditions which influenced much of the culture of medieval Europe, the ghosts often seemed to conduct themselves in accordance with ancient expectations about the behaviour of the malevolent dead. Similarly, it was by long-standing custom and practice that a community determined its ritual response to the ghosts which afflicted it.

  * * *

  1. See E.O.G. Turville-Petre, The Origins of Icelandic Literature, Oxford 1953.

  2. See H.R. Ellis, The Road to Hel: A study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature, Cambridge 1943; and K. Hume, ‘From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old Norse Literature’, Studies in Philology LXXVII (1980), pp. 1–25.

  3. See N.K. Chadwick, ‘Norse Ghosts’, Folklore LVII (1946), pp. 50–65 and 106–27. See also M. Fjalldal, The Long Arm of Coincidence: The Frustrated Connection between Beowulf and Grettis Saga, Toronto, 1998, which sets out to disprove the connection between Beowulf and Grettis Saga and, in doing so, conducts an extensive review of the similarities between the two works. For a survey of Norse views of death and the afterlife, see E.O.G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, London 1964, Chap. XV.

  4. For a useful review of the common traits of Scandinavian ghosts, see C. Lecouteux, Fantômes et Revenants au Moyen Age, pp. 171–85.

  Beowulf

  The Anglo-Saxon heroic poem Beowulf, which is contained in a single manuscript from the tenth century but which may have been composed as early as the eighth century, contains both Christian and pre-Christian elements, forming two discernible strands which run through the entire narrative. It can be argued that the pre-Christian strand, which tells of episodes in the life of the hero Beowulf in terms which correspond to the code of the warrior tribes of Northern Europe and Scandinavia is by far the stronger, so that the theology of the early medieval Church provides a presentational gloss on a heroic tale which draws strongly on pre-Christian Germanic traditions. One of these traditions is to be found in the depiction of Grendel, the first and, in terms of the narrative, most memorable of Beowulf ’s opponents. The poet presents Grendel as a monstrous nightstalker of supernatural power and malignity, whose raids on Heorot, the feasting-hall of the old Danish king Hrothgar, are the cause of both terror and disgrace to the king’s warrior retinue. As we shall see from other stories in this section, Grendel bears a basic resemblance to the nightstalkers of the Icelandic sagas, and thus probably corresponds to an enduring pre-Christian stereotype of the corporeal ghost, a dweller in darkness, who prowls resentfully round the illuminated houses of living men. Superficially, however, and because of the Christian gloss which is placed upon the Beowulf narrative, Grendel differs from this stereotype in that he is set in a theological context as one of the monstrous descendants of Cain, dwelling in a hell of resentment, alienated by his evil lineage from the joys of the blessed and the laughter of the feast-hall.

  Grendel the Nightstalker

  Lines 85–127

  Then the mighty spirit who dwelt in darkness bore a grievous time of torment. Each day he heard loud revelry in hall – the sound of the harp and the clear-singing minstrel who, able to recount the first making of men from distant ages, spoke. The minstrel told how the Almighty made the earth, a fair and bright plain, which water encompasses, and, triumphant in His power, appointed the radiance of the sun and moon as light for land-dwellers, decking the earth-regions with branches and leaves. He fashioned life for every creature that lives and moves. So those brave men lived prosperously in joy, until one began to compass deeds of malice. That grim spirit was called Grendel, renowned for traversing the marches, who held the moors, the fen and fastness. Unblessed creature, he dwelt for a while in the lair of monsters, after the Creator had condemned them. On Cain’s kindred did the everlasting Lord avenge the crime of murder, the slaying of Abel. He had no joy of that feud, but the Creator drove him far from mankind for that misdeed. Thence all evil broods were born, ogres and elves and evil spirits – the giants also, who for a long time fought with God, for which He gave them their reward.

  So, after night had come, Grendel went to the lofty house, to find how the Ring-Danes had settled themselves after their ale-drinking. He found inside a band of noble warriors, sleeping after the banquet. They knew not sorrow, the sad lot of mortals. Straightway the grim and greedy creature of damnation, fierce and furious, was ready. He seized thirty thanes in their resting-place. Thence he went back again, exulting in plunder, journeying home, to seek out his abode with that fill of slaughter. Then in the light of the half-dawned day, Grendel’s strength in war was manifest to men. After the feast a lamentation, a great cry, rose in the morning …

  The poem goes on to tell how Grendel’s depredations against Heorot and the warrior retinue of Hrothgar become generally known ‘to sons of men … sadly in song’ [line 149], and how the Geatish hero Beowulf comes from across the sea to offer Hrothgar his services against the fiend. After a feast of welcome, when all the other warriors have fallen asleep, Beowulf lies awake in the hall waiting for Grendel’s approach.

  The Defeat of Grendel

  Lines 703–823

  The nightstalker, the shadow-creature, came through the dusky night. The liegemen who had to guard that gabled hall slept – all except one. Men knew full well the demon foe could not drag them to the shades below when the Creator did not will it. But he, fiercely alert and waiting for the foe, prepared in swelling rage for the ordeal of battle.

  Then came Grendel, advancing from the moor under the misty slopes. God’s anger rested on him. The wicked foe thought to take by treachery one of the race of men in the high hall. He strode beneath the clouds until he clearly saw the wine-building, treasure-house of men, gleaming with plates of gold. Nor was that the first time that he had trespassed in Hrothgar’s home. Never in all the days of his life, before or since, did he come with worse fortune upon the guardians of the hall. Thus the creature, deprived of joy, came journeying to the hall. The door, fastened by forged bands, fell open straightaway when he touched it with his hands. Thus, bent on destruction, for he was enraged, he tore apart the entrance to the hall.

  Quickly then the fiend advanced across the many-coloured paving of the floor, stepping out in angry mood. From his eyes there came a horrible light, most like a flame. He saw many men in the hall, a troop of kinsmen, a band of warriors, sleeping all together. Then his spirit laughed aloud: he, the cruel monster, resolving to sever the life of every one of them from his body before day came. The hope of feasting full had come to him. But it was no longer his fortune that he should devour more of human kind after that night. Hygelac’s mighty kinsman [the warrior Beowulf] kept watch to see how the murderous foe would set to work with sudden attacks. The monster had no mind to put it off, but from the outset quickly seized a sleeping warri
or, rent him greedily, bit his body, drank blood from his veins, swallowed bite after bite; and soon consumed every part of the dead man, even his feet and hands.

  Forward and nearer he advanced, and then tried to seize with his hand the valiant warrior on his bed. The fiend reached out towards him. Beowulf at once became aware of the enemy’s purpose, and sat up supporting himself on his arm. Instantly the master of crimes realised that never in this world, in all the regions of the earth, had he known a mightier hand-grip in any other man. His mind and spirit responded with fear, but did not help him to make his escape. In his mind he wanted to get away – he wished to flee into the darkness and go back to the swarm of devils. In all his lifetime, he had never been in a plight like this before. Then Hygelac’s brave kinsman remembered what he had said that evening. He stood erect and grasped him tight, so that his fingers were strained to bursting. The monster moved away: the chief stepped forward too. The infamous creature thought to slip away, to distance himself, to flee away thence to his fastland in the fen. He knew the power of his fingers was in the foe-man’s grip. What a sorry journey that terrible raider made when he approached Heorot!