The Most Terrifying Monsters in Norse Mythology Explained

The Most Terrifying Monsters in Norse Mythology Explained The draugr is what happens when death simply isn't enough to stop someone. In Norse tradition, a draugr is a corpse that gets back up — not because of any spell or curse placed on it, but because of its own sheer will. It returns to guard its burial mound and the treasure buried with it, and it does so with a body that has bloated far beyond its living size, with skin gone the color of a deep bruise, blue-black and wrong in a way that your eyes want to look away from. The sagas, particularly the Eyrbyggja saga and the Grettis saga, describe draugar as stronger than any living man, capable of controlling the weather around them, shapeshifting, and driving people to madness simply by being near them. Some accounts describe them swimming through solid stone as easily as water.