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Chapter 5. The Underworld 120
the “village below the graveyard.” For the Finns, Saamí, Shetlanders, Highlanders
(Scotland), and many of the other small, rural Scandinavian districts, the cemetery
or burial place still represents both the “marker” of the Underworld home for the
dead and also the “entry place” into the Otherworld (previously Helheim or Hel for
the Scandinavians) for the newly dead. Because of this, there are many precautions
to be taken when in a graveyard so not to “accidentally” bring them back to the
Land of the Living as a draugr (ON = “reanimated corpse”).
In many districts throughout Northern Europe, regardless of linguistic culture,
there are customs surrounding interment which are precautionary in nature so that
the newly dead will make a “one-way” trip to the graveyard because the soulless
corpse returning to the Land of the Living was considered very real, dangerous and
deadly. In many areas in the North, for example, a body is removed from a house
through a specially created opening next to a door, between the removed door and
the hinged jamb, or through a “special” window so that when the corpse should
decide to return home, it cannot; its return path is blocked by closure. The belief
here is that the body or draugr 12 can only return by the same route by which it
was taken out. Additionally, there are customs dealing with the return of the corpse
such chopping off the head and placing it between the knees to keep it from walking.
All these customs taken together are to bring the dead to the final resting place and
to make sure he stays there. The final resting place for the corpse represents the
new “home” in the Underworld and the soul’s starting place for its new life .
When customs in Northern Europe pertaining to death and burial are investigated
by collecting by ethnologists, comparing both within single cultures and
between neighboring regions, a hazy, but definite picture of a northern Underworld
begins to emerge which crosses cultural boundaries. The Underworld is similar
in many respects to Midgard or the Land of the Living. The inhabitants live in
villages and communities comprised of others from the same geographical location
on Midgard or in extended family units below the ancestral burial grounds. Life goes
on differing little from the life they had known previously and they engage in the
same daily occupations known to them from above ground. There are others who
live below as well who have never had earthly such as the álfar, Svartálfar (dwarves),
giants (jötunar), Æsir, and Vanir. The Underworld really seems to be a continuation
of the life lived above ground with certain exceptions. There is intercourse with races
of beings rarely encountered above and with ancestors and friends who had gone
before, and there are dangers as well as fortune associated with such encounters.
12 ON draugr = ”reanimated corpse” often retaining a small amount of the personality of
who the individual was previously, but which has tremendously increased strength, and is always
dangerous to the living except in special cases where the draugr’s killing harming an individual
was taboo, especially in the case of familial relationship.