The Walking Dead

Hi folks,

In the news recently was a piece about two 8th-century skeletons with stones wedged between their jaws being discovered in Ireland. The article goes on to talk about the possible reasons for such burials. The men were likely outcasts or dangerous to the community, be it through sickness or the threat of violence and the ritual was performed in order to prevent their souls returning to their bodies. Tales of wandering cadavers or ‘revenants’ were pretty common in the Middle Ages, popping up in literature and monastic chronicles. And so I thought I’d share some of them today.

Scandinavian Sagas often featured this kind of tale. The Sagas featured tales of settlements, of communities forming. They were not written down until later in the medieval period, but existed in an oral tradition which predates the earliest Christian ghost stories. They still influenced the ghost stories produced from the monasteries, however. These tales were different from others on medieval hauntings as they tended to be tied to a community, and this obviously fits in with the theory of the outcast.

One such story from the Icelandic Laxdaela Saga tells of a violent man named Hrapp, who would take his anger out on his neighbours and terrify his family. On his deathbed, his final wish was to be buried standing in the doorway of his home so that he could keep a watchful eye over his property. His corpse wandered after death, killing his servants and attacking his neighbours as he had done in life. His terrified wife deserted the home and resettled with her brother. Eventually, the townsfolk moved the body to a deserted area and Hrapp was rarely seen wandering again. (Chapter XVII, 950 AD)

Years later, a farmhand on these very lands complained of being attacked. He took his master Olaf to the site and they were attacked by Hrapp. Olaf stabbed him with his spear, leaving the spearhead embedded in the corpse. The next morning he went to Hrapp’s burial site and found the body with the spearhead still in its chest. Hrapp was then burnt and the ashes scattered. This put an end to his visitations. (Chapter XXIV, 962 AD)

This is the tale of an outcast. Hrapp was a threat to the community both in life and after death and the people dealt with it their own way, defending the town. Most ghost stories in the medieval Christian world, however, were straightforwardly didactic, the dead serving as a warning to the living sinners that eternal, usually quite apposite punishment lay in wait (such as the tale of the lush damned to drink from an eternally full cup of sulphur and brimstone). The revenants didn’t always fit this category, however. While they often served as a warning for unchristian behaviour, they also represented a physical danger to the community. The creatures themselves weren’t vanishing and ethereal, they were rotting flesh and bone.

William of Newburgh, a 12th-century historian and canon relates a number of supernatural tales. This is but one: There was a chaplain who enjoyed a rather secular lifestyle. He was vain and loved the trappings of the material world, kept a mistress and was so fond of hunting that people called him ‘The Hounds’ Priest’. When he died, he was buried in Melrose Abbey. His body (most likely under the influence of Satan) did not remain in its grave, however. When the sun set, he would wander around inside the monastery and the surrounding grounds, terrifying the living, who could do nothing. He returned repeatedly to haunt his mistress until she could take no more and confessed to a priest. He returned to the monastery at night armed and in the company of another priest and two strong men. The hours passed with no sign of the undead and the cold became too much for the other three men, who left the priest after midnight to find warmth.

With a lone man left to protect the monastery, the wandering corpse returned. Groaning loudly, it attacked the priest, who swung at the creature with a battle axe, striking it hard. He drove it into retreat, fearlessly shepherding it back to its tomb. The three men arrived back at the monastery too late, but resolved to return to the tomb the next morning. At dawn, they opened the grave and found that the corpse had bled heavily from the wound inflicted by the priest. They exhumed the body and burnt it at the monastery, scattering the ashes in the wind. (This was adapted from Medieval Ghost Stories by Andrew Joynes, 137-139)

This method of dealing with the corpse, i.e. cremation, was not uncommon in earlier Scandinavian tales. What is worth noting is that a holy man should resort to this method at all. The Christian way of preventing the body from returning was to place a scroll of absolution on the corpse’s chest. And so while the religious moral is there, highlighting the dangers of worldly vice to your eternal soul, there is also uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of an entirely spiritual solution. This creature is a physical threat to those in and around the monastery, and so the priest feels that action, as opposed to faith, is required.

An earlier tale, dating from the early-11th century manages to turn all of this on its head. It was recorded by historian Thietmar of Merseburg. At Deventer, there was a church which was rebuilt after being destroyed. Once, in the small hours, the priest who was in charge heard voices in song and stumbled upon the undead holding a Christian mass. He reported back to the bishop and was told to sleep in the church that night. The dead returned after sunset, picked up the priest and his bed, and ejected him from the church. The bishop once again insisted he spend the night, only this time to re-consecrate the ground with holy water and bring relics to ward off the undead visitors. His efforts were of little or no use, however. That night they returned once again, picked up the priest and lay him on the altar. They then started a fire and held him down as the flames consumed his life. (Adapted from Joynes, 18)

This may not be a standard tale of a revenant, but it does seem to be influenced by Scandinavian tales. What is interesting is that there is no moral lesson to be learned other than it being a reminder of the after life around the time of the Millennium, when people feared the approach of Judgement Day. Most noteworthy, however, is that the sense of community is between the dead, not the living. The priest is the outcast who treats obvious Christians as heathens by brandishing holy water and relics and his punishment reflects a fate which generally befitted the undead.

This is a topic with plenty of depth and there’s a lot of interesting reading out there. The Scandinavian sagas can be found for free online and a handy, short introduction is Andrew Joynes’ Medieval Ghost Stories.