In this chapter the posthumously restless dead, or ‘ghosts’ of Old Icelandic saga literature will be discussed. The ghosts in sagas were not ethereal phantoms dressed in white, but dead people appearing to the living in their physical, recognizable and undecayed bodies. These corporeal, physical revenants seem to have both malevolent and benevolent functions in sagas: they may give assistance and advice to people, but may also cause the living trouble and fear, as well as madness, disease, or death. In the light of earlier studies (e.g. Byock 1982, 133; Vésteinn Ólason 2003, 161; Nedkvitne 2004, 38–43; Martin 2005, 75–80) the dead generally became restless of their own free and often malevolent will. Thus, activity after death was usually not a punishment for the deceased, but an expression of their wish to continue to participate in the society of the living. Behind this was presumably a belief in some kind of life power and vitality remained in the human body after death – “a pagan relic” (Vésteinn Ólason 2003, 167) that may have survived in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iceland (see also Caciola 1996; and on similar ideas in Finnic folklore Koski 2011, 94–97).

This idea fits well with the ghosts of the so-called Sagas of Icelanders, Íslendingasögur, which were written mainly in the thirteenth century, that is, over 200 years after Icelanders had adopted Christianity, but not with all ghosts in the saga literature. In other, more mythical saga genres such as Eddic poetry, often thought to derive from the heathen period (ca. 900) but available only in later manuscripts (ca. 1270), and the somewhat later fornaldarsögur (also called Legendary sagas, written ca. 1270–1400), the dead can be awakened against their will by various mythical beings such as heathen gods and goddesses, or witches using their skills to serve their own interests. Moreover, in some later fourteenth-century Íslendingasögur it is implied that restless corpses were made active by ‘unclean spirits’, possibly because the spirits invaded the dead bodies, thus suggesting a link with the phenomenon of demonic possession known in medieval Christianity.

The contrast between the activeness and agency of the deceased in the earlier Íslendingasögur and the more subordinate role of the dead in the mythical sources (if the category "more subordinate" is correct) and later Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur will be the main theme of this chapter. I will consider the possibility that medieval Icelandic beliefs changed so that the dead became “less active” from the late thirteenth century onwards – that the dead were originally considered active agents that had a will and power of their own but, as foreign (Christian) ideas became more internalized and intertwined with indigenous ones, another mode of thought began to displace the old one. The restless dead were increasingly interpreted as objects that had no power of their own, but were awakened by use of magic or made active by unclean spirits that invaded their lifeless bodies.

From Powerful Agents to Subordinate Objects? The Posthumously Restless Dead in Medieval Iceland (ca. 1200–1400). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311844208_From_Powerful_Agents_to_Subordinate_Objects_The_Posthumously_Restless_Dead_in_Medieval_Iceland_ca_1200-1400 [accessed Sep 25, 2017].