InNordic folklore;Danish:genganger,Norwegian:gjenganger,Swedish:gengångare ("(a)gain-walker"), among more, is a term for arevenant orghost, meaning "someone which goes again", from the Scandinavian verb of "going again" (Norwegian:gå igjen,Swedish:gå igen) in the sense, of a deceased person haunting post-mortem;[1][2] compareGerman:Wiedergänger ("Re-walker").
Other forms include:Icelandic:afturganga,Norwegian:attergangar, stemming fromOld Norse:aptrgangr ("re-walker");Danish:genfærd,Norwegian:gjenferd ("again-travel or after-journey").
Gjenganger, and thereof, consists of two parts; the prefixgen- (Norwegian:gjen-), a shortened form ofigen (Norwegian:igjen), the same as "again" → (a)gain; and the suffix-ganger (Swedish:-gångare), "-ganger, -goer, -walker" (comparedoppelganger); thus meaning "again-walker" (lit. 'gainganger'), "walking again", as in "walking after death". It is related to the Scandinavian verb of "going again" (Swedish:gå igen) with the sense of haunting post-mortem,[2] for example:Swedish:en död som går igen, "a dead which goes again → a dead person which refuses the afterlife to walk the earth again as a revenant".
The Norwegian formattergangar means the same but uses the prefixatter (compareSwedish:åter), meaning roughly "re-", but also "again", "once (again)" (Swedish:återigen), "back" etc.; thus meaning "re-walker", which is also found as a root-cognate inOld Norse:aptrgangr andIcelandic:afturganga.
The forms,Danish:genfærd,Norwegian:gjenferd, switches the suffix forDanish:færd,Norwegian:ferd, "travel, journey, trip", related to "fare", "ferry" etc.
Agjenganger could have several reasons to return from the afterlife. Murdered people and their murderers could seldom sleep peacefully in their graves. People who had committed suicide often came back asgjengangere. At other times, people came back from the grave because they had left something undone. Most often they needed someone to help them do this, before they could finally be at peace.
Thegjenganger in the Scandinavian tradition took on an entirelycorporeal form. It normally had no spectre-like qualities whatsoever. In older traditions, thegjenganger was very malicious and violent in nature, coming back from the grave to torment its family and friends. Their relatives took extensive precautions to make sure they stayed in their graves.
This tradition of the violentgjenganger goes back to theViking Age, where they are present in many of the Icelandic sagas, among others:Grettis saga,Eyrbyggja saga andThe Saga of Eric the Red. In this tradition, thegjenganger was a mortal creature. An example of this is Grettir slaying thegjenganger Glámr with his sword. These Viking-agegjengangere were often calleddraugr, and the two are likely to be different names for the same phenomenon.[3][4]
People had numerous ways of both defending themselves against thegjenganger, and stopping people from becoming one in the first place.
The tradition of a pile of stones or twigs (varp) often marked a place where someone has died. It was believed that when you passed this place, you should throw another stone/twig on thevarp, to commemorate what had happened there. Doing so would sometimes bring luck on your further travels, while not doing so would result in bad luck and dangerous accidents. Many of thesevarps have now disappeared, but in a few places thevarp is marked with a sign or something similar.
In slightly newer tradition, thegjenganger remains a violententity, though in a less direct way, now becoming more of a disease-spreader. Thesegjengangere would attack people with their so-called dead man's pinch (dødningeknip). The pinch was often administered when the person was asleep. Both the forest creature (huldra) and the water spirits (nøkken) were also accused of doing the same, using bites instead of pinches, often aimed at the victim's face. This belief in beings attacking people in their sleep was used as a warning against going to sleep in specific places; near the graveyard, mountains or water.[5]
In later Swedish folklore, a distinction is made between the traditionalgjenganger, in Swedish calledgengångare, and another type of ghost known asgast. Whereas thegengångare looked virtually identical to a living human, thegast was known to be transparent and/or skeletal in appearance, making it impossible to see who the phantom had been while alive. And whereas the Swedish version of thegengångare were usually said to be rather harmless, it was thegast who was known to cause diseases. They were also known to cause accidents and scare people for no apparent reason other than that they enjoyed doing so.
Today it mostly compares with the modern perception of ghosts, most often beingethereal in form, and non-violent in nature. The wordgjenganger is being used less, the contemporary word ghost (spøkelse) having mostly taken over. Where the termgjenganger does occur, it may be treated simply as a synonym for ghost. The corresponding verbal phrase walk again (gå igjen) is just one way of saying "haunt" with reference to ghosts.