The one about ancient zombie viking history.
Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draugr
Loose transcript:
Hi everybody and welcome back to yet another episode of nightmare now. I’m the host, Erik Byrne and this is the show where we vacation vicariously to viking valhalla and venture vocally through voodoo, venom and the vacuum of space. Today let’s stay a little bit more grounded towards the first part of that phrase.
Life is good here, after I stopped doing my alien research, the sightings in the woods mostly stopped, so that’s nice. For more on that check out last week's episode! Better yet, binge the series! Although I’m on my third borrowed car because of mechanical issues, so I’m pretty sure I’m still the target of light sabotage from the men in black. No matter, they can't stop the signal and neither can anything else except my need to sleep or procrastinate.
I’m working on a longer episode on a horrific high seas adventure I hope to air within the next couple of weeks that I’m really excited about but for now we’ve got some historical scandinavian spooks. Let’s just jump right into it! We’ve got an awesome viking ghost story, or is it a zombie story? I guess it’s kind of a little bit of both in a weird way. We’ll get to that in a minute.
My source for this story is this neat little book I picked up called the penguin book of the UNdead, penguin like the publishing company, put this out and it’s kind of a curated collection of snippets and apocrypha from various historical texts that reference the undead, ghost, ghouls, ghasts, zombies, vampires all kinds of cool s**t. It goes from ancient hebrew stuff, scandinavian sagas, ancient egyptian mummies, the roman empire all the way up through the renaissance it’s awesome. I’ll throw a link in the show notes if you want a copy for yourself or a friend or whatever. It’s a cool read and I’ll probably rip out a few chapters for shorter episodes like this one. Not all in a row we’re still gonna mix up the feed but it’s cool nonetheless.
So this story is from apparently a few different sources referenced within the book of the undead I’ve got here and maybe even a couple more besides. Basically in the thirteenth century the danes and norwegians and swedes and everyone else up there were, let’s call it introduced, to christianity and with that giant airquotes “introduction” came mostly screams, clanging swords and rape, but more importantly for our purposes today, the gift of literature. From then on the Scandinavians wrote down their current and past history and oral traditions. Curiously scattered among those histories, and sometimes even removed from the sagas, or legends and stuff, were tales like this one:
Asvith and Asmund were an inseparable pair of viking berserkers. Great friends that did everything together. The soundtrack to this next section I want you to imagine Queen’s “You’re my best friend” over this next montage, I’d play it over this part but that would absolutely be the end of this show. If you think a living dinosaur or plane hijacking is horrifying imagine queen’s lawyers. If you’re not into queen, some alternatives include imagining vikings collapsing in andy’s room to randy newman’s “you got a friend in me”, imagine vikings, I shudder to say, twerking to Saweetie and Doja cat’s “best friend” and if none of that appeals to you there’s always witch doctor from the mokele mbembe episode which is applicable in just about every scenario. I’ll have to throw it on the wedding playlist.
Any way, no matter what the score is to this montage, you have the best of best buddies Asvith and Asmund having the time of their lives pillaging and killing together, I’m picturing big jacked bearded dudes frollicking over grassy hills in the sunlight but also lopping off people’s heads with battle axes. Maybe throwing in some romantic blades of glory style lifts and choreo. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and (SLICE WILHELM SCREAM)
So Asvith and Asmund would do all their raping and pillaging, constantly challenging each other to feats of strength. Who could fell a tree faster, who could ford a river in their canoe quicker, which one of them could kick a severed monk’s head farther, who could pee harder, you know, Guy stuff right.
The fun part was that they would always tie. They had the same size dongs, they could both run just as fast, and they had an equal kill count. All that jazz, a regular old simon and garfunkle these two. I honestly have no idea if those two actually got along, maybe hall and oates? This isn’t really a music show, at least not at it’s heart, we’ve talked a lot about music this episode so if you're new I guess I understand the confusion. We’ll do some music stuff sometime, there’s a lot of freaky stuff in that field from fleetwood mac fingerblasting each other to the point of madness, marky mark fighting the vietnam war well into the eighties or elvis presley killing john F kennedy.
Anyway, Asvith and Asmund, best buddies until the bitter end. It was because they were so close and definitely not lovers that they made the dastardly pact that made the second half of this story possible. They made a blood pact between them, because they were so evenly matched, one would challenge the other to a final test of strength. Whoever outlived the the other had to be entombed with them for three days in their final resting place. Buried alive. At the end of three days they could leave the tomb, at last the tie would be broken. I’m picturing the who gets the family bible song in step brothers at the end of this trial as one of them takes a last wistful look at his blood brother. You know speaking of family bibles, this seems oddly christian for a couple of pagan vikings, entombed for three days only to emerge gloriously? Food for thought I guess.
The prophecy and oath was destined to come to pass, mostly because humans aren’t generally immortal and eventually Asvith succumbed to some sort of wasting disease. That’s really a bummer, I feel like my man was definitely hoping for a warrior's death, but hey, prostate cancer and tuberculosis don’t discriminate.
So as any good friend would do and I expect any of my listeners to do should I meet an untimely demise, Asmund was entombed with three days rations in a viking burial mound along with the corpse of Asvith and his horse and dog. I can’t say for certain if the dog and horse were alive at the time of burial, thirteenth century scholars weren’t super into details like that, more broad strokes folks. Actually I found it, in another retelling of the story, unfortunately they were alive and just chilling with asmund.
And that’s about all we know for like six minutes. Again, 13th century scholars, not great at narrative pacing. Then again neither am I, I’m jumping all over the place. They say basically right after the burial, This swedish dude named Erik shows up with his army. I think it’s more likely two days post burial. He sounds like he’s very handsome and strong, and smart and would make a great podcaster. So Erik comes along, not much info is given, including his last name, but he’s got flowing hair, arnold schwarzenegger's body and tons of five star reviews on itunes, and he sees this burial mound and, being a viking himself, realizes that there’s a good chance there’s treasure in the mound and commands his men to hack the thing open with mattocks to get at the gooey treasure cream filling at the center of every viking burial mound.
They crack open the mound and much to their surprise it’s cavernous. There’s a vast hollow space within the hill, atypical for these sorts of mounds. Not having access to the foresight of indiana jones, uncharted, skyrim, or nic cage’s national treasure films they think it’s a good idea to just lower someone into the inky black crypt below in a bucket with a meager torch for light. This is easily a movie scene, The young viking descending in a bucket, into the cavern, lit from above while asmund dashes across the foreground. He hides just out of sight of the torchlight. As soon as the bucket touches down cut to Erik and his vikings watching the guy and the torch lower down and touch the ground and then, wham! he gets tackled by some black form and the torch goes spiraling into a puddle of blood and then goes out in time with a muffled scream.
A few seconds pass like hours as they look down into the hole and feel the rope tug three times, the universal sign for PULL ME THE f**k UP AND GET ME OUT OF HERE. Hastily they yank up the bucket from the blackness, to see a northman’s helmet and graying beard being pulled up but looking down. Lightning just flashed outside my window while I’m writing the outline, we’ll include that too
They bring him all the way up out of the mound and he finally turns, illuminated by a flash of lightning to reveal his gruesome visage. It isn’t the scout they sent down into the tomb. It’s Asmund. His gray beard streaked with crimson blood, his face pallid, as if he had lived his whole life away from sunlight, claw marks raked across the left side of his face and his ear was missing entirely. His clothes were torn and ragged. Dude looked irreparably f**ked up.
Upon seeing this ghoulish warrior emerge from the tomb Erik and the rest of his party just took off running. People just didn’t mess with that sort of evil back in the day. While everyone is just taking off, which is hilarious in it’s own right, Asmund just shouts, quote: “Why are ye so amazed to look upon me! Emptied of all color? Truly, any living man becomes diminished among the dead!”
Quickly they realize that Asmund is actually a living man and they hear his tale. THe most surprising part of that is that they wouldn’t have just cleft him in twain as soon as he emerged from the depths below. I’ve always wanted to say cleft in twain in context, woohoo. Asmund goes on to explain, presumably while the scout is still in the hole just like, guys? Anyone? Hello? Asmund explains his oath and that he needed to spend 3 days with his homes corpse, presumably clarifying several times that he wasn’t gay.
Asmund goes on to explain the early part of his long weekend in the crypt passing uneventfully and then waking to the sound of horrific moaning and growling from Asvith’s resting place. Asvith had risen from his eternal slumber for a f**king midnight snack. He had become a draugr, A scandinavian revenant. A hybrid between a ghost and a zombie, the restless spirit possessing the undead flesh of the deceased. A Zombie warrior of superhuman strength, a pungent odor of death and long claws define their kind, along with the insatiable hunger of the undead.
Asvith had risen as a draugr and consumed the dog in the burial mound and then ripped apart and ate the horse. But that wasn’t enough for the draugr. Asvith’s soul was long gone, his body was a ghoul motivated by hunger and greed to seek and destroy anything it could, especially grave robbers. Easily interpreting as both the former or the latter the undead advanced on his former best friend clawing at his face and tearing his ear off the side of his head. Asmund finally drew his sword and managed to lop the artist formerly known as asvith’s head clean off it’s unholy body. Thinking quickly with the head rolling around, spitting, growling and biting at his ankles he kicked the headless draugr back into it’s coffin and staked it through the heart because some things are just f**king universal.
After everything was explained Asmund helped get the scout out of the tomb and with him grabbed some of the treasure that lay within. At this point his best friend was well and truly gone, maybe to Valhalla, maybe to somewhere else, but either way he wouldn’t need the treasure. Erik was paid some of it for helping rescue Asmund from the mound inadvertently and that’s pretty much where the trail goes cold. At least in this book, there might be more in the actual texts but this book mostly has a few pages of excerpts and editorials for each story.
One of the amazing things about this is the story appears in the 16 volume tome “The deeds of the danes” Which isn’t like a bunch of tall tales and legends but a generally accepted historical document. Detailing the history of the danish people from the founding of king Dan’s kingdom all the way up through eleven eighty seven and there’s very little besides this that modern people would consider overtly supernatural or paranormal. In a weird way that adds another weird bit of credence to the tale.
And I guess there you have it folks. They don't teach draugr in history class, at least none of the courses I took. But the fringes of history are full of weird outliers like this. Whispered half truths, passed down oral traditions, scattered sightings and tales of the dead walking the earth in innumerable forms. It’s probably nothing though…
I feel like I have to have that caveat on the end though. Having men in black f**k up the alternator in my loaner cars is one thing but having an ancient norse warrior rip my ear off is another thing entirely. My monitor headphones wouldn’t fit right! I need that ear to bring more Draugr stories.
Next time you’re plundering old nord tombs in skyrim and one of these guys comes clickety clacking towards you, before you lop his head off with the savage strike or whatever that perk is called, remember, he, or she, could have been someone’s best friend.
So that’s basically what I’ve got this week for you guys. Your homework this week is to tag and share this with your best friend and debate who’s decapitating who when push comes to undead shove. I’ve had a lot of crazy stuff going on at work and stuff this week and I know the last two weeks have been a day late which is making me seriously reconsider my seven AM release timeslot.
I’m gonna adhere to that as best as I can, and this one is at least gonna come out today, but it’s gonna be something I’m taking a look at over the next few weeks. If you have any opinion on the matter one way or the other, or better yet literally any other opinion on the show, you can find all the socials, Email and other episodes at Nightmarenow.com . I love you guys for sticking with me this long, and continuing to do so. Go out this week and start your own quest. Start that podcast or novel or business, take that lesson or course, dust off that old skateboard or musical instrument. You’re worth taking the chance on yourself.
Anyway, I’d wish you all sweet dreams while you're chasing those life dreams, but we all know it’s only nightmares now! Catch ya next week!