Draugen — the drowned man who never came home

A boat sailing against the wind with only half a hull — split lengthwise, crewed by the dead — is the worst thing a fisherman on the outer coast can see. It is the draugen, and it means one man on his own boat is not coming home.

The draugen is the spirit of a sailor drowned at sea and never recovered for burial in consecrated ground, held to the water by an unfinished funeral. He belongs to the fishing communities of the outer north — Nordland Peder Balke's painting Fra Nordland — a snow-streaked mountain wall with a single sharp horn rising above a dark strip of coast, green breakers rolling ashore in the foreground and a lone sail far out on the water. Peder Balke, Fra Nordland, Nationalmuseum (Stockholm) Northern Norwegian county running from south of the Arctic Circle to the border with Troms og Finnmark in the north. In the petty-kingdom era the southern part of Hålogaland; today one of the largest Norwegian counties by area but among the most thinly populated, the long-coastal heartland of cod fishing and the home of the Lofoten archipelago. Principal city: Bodø. Nordland Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the world , Lofoten Gunnar Berg's Vinter i Lofoten — a snow-drifted fishing hamlet with barrels stacked by the boathouses, masts and snow-covered peaks beyond. Gunnar Berg, Vinter i Lofoten (before 1893), via Wikimedia Commons Archipelago in Nordland County in northern Norway, lying north of the Arctic Circle and stretching about a hundred and seventy kilometres off the mainland coast. Famous for dramatic peaks rising directly out of the sea, traditional fishing villages built on stilts (rorbuer), and the centuries-old winter cod-fishing industry that supplied the dried-stockfish trade Bergen ran during the Hanseatic era. Site of the reconstructed Viking-Age chieftain's hall at Borg — the largest known Viking-Age building in Scandinavia. Lofoten Islands Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"The Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen Wharf , Vesterålen A panoramic harbour-survey photograph of Nyksund in Vesterålen from around 1900 — fishing-village buildings and drying racks on the rocky shore of the open coast. Unknown photographer, Nyksund, Vesterålen (c. 1900–1910), Havnedirektoratet collection, National Archives of Norway Archipelago in Nordland immediately north of Lofoten, spread over Hinnøya, Langøya, Andøya, and hundreds of smaller islands, its outer districts living for centuries on the cod fisheries of the surrounding banks. The fishing communities of the ocean side kept one of the strongest draug traditions on the Norwegian coast — the drowned, unburied sailor whose split half-boat sails against the wind. Bø, the fishing municipality on the west side of Langøya, set the figure in heraldry: its coat of arms, granted 7 August 1987, bears a silver half-boat with mast and square sail on a black field. Vesterålen . What he looks like depends on where you ask. In the north he is headless, hunched in leather sea-gear at the tiller; in Trøndelag The Trondheim Fjord in Anders Beer Wilse's 1927 photograph — a curved stony shore with farm fields and a shed at the water's edge, a wooded islet, and the broad fjord running to distant hills under a towering cloud; "Trondhjemsfjorden" is inscribed in the negative. Anders Beer Wilse, Trondhjemsfjorden (1927), Nasjonalbiblioteket Region of central Norway around the Trondheim Fjord, north of Stadt and south of Hålogaland. Its agriculturally rich Trondheim plain is the second-largest area of arable land in the country and the base of the medieval earls of Lade. Trondheim — founded by Olav Tryggvason in 997 as Nidaros — became the seat of the Norwegian archbishopric in 1153 and remains the country's third-largest city and ecclesiastical capital. On the trip Day 3-5 of the trip routes the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) through Trøndelag for the Slektsreisen heritage drive — Trondheim and the Nidaros Cathedral on Day 3, then Stjørdal and Hegra, then on up the Stjørdalen valley to Kylloplass. Trøndelag (Trondheim) Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldWorshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayThe King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Hytte — a sacred pastime of modern Norway and the south he wears a knot of seaweed where his face should be, and one Trøndelag tale has the two kinds meet on the shingle and fight over a drowned man washed up between them.

He is as much a sound as a sight. He cries a long wail across the water before a storm — h — a — u, or sometimes just so cold — and a knock against the hull on a calm night is the draugen trying to climb aboard. To hear the cry from your own boat is already the wrong sign. Answering it from the deck sinks you; not answering does not save you.

The figure came down from the Old Norse draugr, the corpse that would not stay in its mound in the Icelandic sagas. Over the centuries his home moved from the burial mound to the sea, and his grievance from disturbed grave-goods to a body the sea would not give back. The parson Andreas Faye Christiane Schreiber, Portrait of Andreas Faye (1861), Rektorgalleriet, Universitetet i Agder Norwegian parson, historian and folklore collector (1802–1869), a teacher in Arendal and from 1833 parish priest at nearby Holt. His Norske Sagn (Arendal, 1833) was the first published collection of Norwegian legends and is counted as the beginning of folklore study in Norway; a revised, expanded second edition appeared in 1844 as Norske Folke-Sagn. Faye recorded rather than retold — a documentary register that drew a scathing anonymous review from the historian P. A. Munch. But the collection awakened the interest that Asbjørnsen and Moe's folktale volumes of 1841–44 built on, and it became Theodor Kittelsen's sourcebook: Kittelsen drew Pesta from Faye's Black Death chapter for Svartedauen (1900). Also discussed in Pesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmNøkken — the water-spirit who pulls you under put the coastal tellings in print in his 1844 Norske Folke-Sagn; Theodor Kittelsen Kittelsen's pen drawing of the draugen — a skull-faced figure in sea-clothes riding the storm surf with arms flung wide, hat in hand, above the smashed timbers of a boat; a lone sailor clings in the foam below a lightning-crossed sky. Theodor Kittelsen, Draugen (1887), illustration for Troldskab (1892) Norwegian painter and illustrator (1857–1914), born in Kragerø, who more than any other artist fixed the visual identity of the country's folklore beings. Erik Werenskiold brought him into the illustrated Asbjørnsen folktale editions in the early 1880s. A stay at the Skomvær lighthouse on outer Lofoten (1887–89), where his brother-in-law served as assistant keeper, fed Troldskab (1892). His plague-hag drawings, begun after an encounter with an old woman on the island of Skåtøy, were published as the book Svartedauen in 1900. The same year, at Lauvlia in Sigdal, he painted his Soria Moria pictures; the national collection bought them at once. Nøkken (1904) — two pale eyes in a black lily-pool — is held by the Nasjonalmuseet; Da Huldra forsvant (1908) paints her vanishing. Also discussed in Pesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretNøkken — the water-spirit who pulls you underNorske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost foreverSoria Moria — the shining castle always out of reach , who lived at the Skomvær lighthouse on outer Lofoten from 1887 to 1889 — his brother-in-law was the assistant keeper — drew him afterwards; and the fishing town of Bø in Vesterålen set the half-boat on its coat of arms in 1987 — the drowned man’s boat, still sailing, made the town’s own emblem.