The Waking Dead of Hrafnkell's Saga

Fljótsdalur, East Iceland

East Iceland's Fljótsdalur valley has a tradition of the aptrganga — the walking dead — documented in the sagas and in oral tradition continuing to the present. The dead who walk here are not passive; they kill and must be physically subdued.

The aptrganga — literally 'again-goer,' the one who goes again — is the Norse and Icelandic form of the revenant: the dead who walk. Unlike the modern zombie, the aptrganga is fully himself in death — retaining personality, purpose, and strength, but amplified. He is, in most accounts, stronger, harder to kill, and more deliberate than in life. Fljótsdalur in East Iceland has the densest saga-period documentation of aptrganga activity. The 10th century sagas that involve the area describe multiple cases of the walking dead — most extensively in Eyrbyggja saga, which gives a detailed account of a haunting at the farm of Fróðá that lasted a full winter and killed multiple people. The method of stopping an aptrganga is specific and physical: you cannot simply pray them to rest. You must exhume the body, decapitate it, and burn it separately from the trunk. The ashes must be scattered in the sea or a river — not on land where they can reassemble. Several sagas describe the aptrganga fighting back during the exhumation. The oral tradition in East Iceland treats the aptrganga as historical fact rather than legend. Farmsteads in the valley have specific traditions about particular draugar — their own version of the word — that had to be dealt with in specific centuries. The methods are described in detail that suggests practical experience. The last documented East Iceland aptrganga case in the oral tradition dates from approximately 1850.