ABSTRACT
"Margt byr i pokunni," a fairly common saying in Icelandic, may be translated as: "Many strange things dwell in the mist." These strange things are ofreskjur, a term that glosses as monster, and refers to dangerous trolls, to horse-like creatures that drown their human riders, and to a vast company of ghosts. Ghosts may move back and forth between these dimensions, appearing to humans in their sleep, manifesting when the human wakes, and then retreating to the dark. The significance of darkness in Iceland is well documented in Adrienne Heijnens ethnographic account of the relationship between dreaming and darkness. This chapter examines beliefs, stories, and sightings of and about ghosts, both historical and contemporary, in order to argue that while many of the ghosts of Iceland's past—the walking dead, those who have been summoned from death, as well as ghosts of nonhuman form—live on in the present, not all have survived and the cultural meaning of many has been transformed.
