Glámr the Ghost — Grettir's Most Terrible Encounter

Þórhallsstaðir, Vatnsdalur, North Iceland

Glámr was a Swedish farmhand hired at a cursed Iceland farm who died on Christmas Day and rose again to haunt the valley. Grettir the Strong wrestled him into silence — but Glámr's last act was to curse Grettir with permanent darkness and fear of the night.

The story of Glámr and Grettir, from Grettis Saga, is the most fully realised ghost-wrestling narrative in the Western literary tradition, and Iceland's clearest statement that some victories cost more than defeat would. Glámr was a Swede, hired as a shepherd at the farm of Þórhallsstaðir in Vatnsdalur, North Iceland. The farm had a reputation: the previous shepherds had been killed by something in the highland pastures. Glámr was not a religious man — he refused to attend Christmas services — and this refusal was, in the saga's accounting, a material factor in what followed. He was found dead on Christmas Day on the hillside above the farm. The body was immovable: three men could not shift it. When it was finally buried, the haunting began. Glámr's ghost was corporeal — heavy, tangible, riding rooftops in the night until the timbers cracked, breaking men's bones, driving livestock from their enclosures. The district was depopulated over three years. Grettir the Strong came to the farm and waited for Glámr. They fought in the moonlight. Grettir was losing — the draugr had the weight of the dead behind him — until the clouds parted and the moonlight hit Glámr's eyes. Grettir looked directly at them. He had been told never to do this. He could not help it. Glámr spoke his curse from the ground where Grettir had finally pinned him. He named Grettir's fate precisely: that Grettir would never grow stronger than he was now; that he would always be outlawed; that the dark would become his enemy and the night fill him with terror. Then Grettir cut off his head. Grettir survived another nineteen years as an outlaw, afraid of the dark, exactly as Glámr had promised.