Haunted North: The Norse Understanding of Ghosts and the Supernatural

The Viking Age world was alive with unseen forces. To the Norse, the dead did not simply vanish into a distant afterlife - they lingered, walked, warned and sometimes rose again in flesh and fury. Ghosts could be physical revenants, dream visitors, protective ancestors or restless spirits tied to land and lineage. Alongside them lived trolls, wights, elves and other beings who shaped daily life as surely as storms or seasons. Drawing on sagas, Eddic poems and later Scandinavian folklore, this exploration reveals a world where the boundary between living and dead was thin, fate was ever present, and the unseen was woven into the fabric of existence.