In the beginning.

So if zombies are re-animated dead folk, the dead who have risen from the grave, then history abounds with tales of the dead walking and clearly up to something too. I'm not going to go too far back but suppose we start with Jesus Christ. He rose from the dead after being crucified but has none of the zombie stuff going on. In fact, just the opposite. A kinder gentler fellow you could not find. So that's not the place to start.

In past posts I've found that the Vikings provided personality galore. Not surprisingly, they've got a good zombie legend. Called a draugr, they were the undead of Norse mythology. Some stories talk of these draugrs as being "ghosts", mainly for their habit of showing up around graves. Acording to legend, they guarded the dead, particularly if they had beed buried with treasure.

Now these creatures were really scary. They were big, possesed enormous strength, stunk like crap and ate people. The Vikings always go big, no farting about. And they drank the blood of their victims too.

Getting rid of them was a chore. It was kind of like slaying a dragon. Only the bravest dare try. A fight could last days and victory was declared when the draugr was back in the hole (grave) from wence it sprang. The tough part was that they were immune to weapons. Only hand to hand fighting would work. Can you think of a less palatable way to start your day? "I'm going to wrestle the undead dear, back at dinner, love you bye!" And just to piss you off even more, they often came back. Now the draugr slayer had to get tough and behead the monster and burn what was left over.

When these little devils wandered across the land most stayed inside if rumours placed one in your neighborhood. However a nasty variation, and one that was infinitely harder to avoid, was the sea draugr. They would appear in half sunken boats and circle their prey or would appear near shore as monsters with seaweed heads. Nights get real long that close to the Arctic circle.