Gjenganger
A Gjenganger (, ' or '; or "; ) in Scandinavian folklore was a term for a revenant, the spirit or ghost of a deceased from the grave. Etymology. ' has two parts; the prefix is related to "again" or "against", "towards" (compare , ') and ' ('against'), from ' ('in, on') and " ('straight, direct') and ' which comes from a word meaning 'foot' or 'walker', thus it means "walking again" as in "walking after death". The form ' comes from ' meaning 'again' and originating from ' meaning "of, away from" but adding the contrastive suffix "", in essence meaning "after walking", "walking away from in contrast with close by", again implying walking  after death. Characteristics. A "gjenganger" could have several reasons to return from the afterlife. Murdered people and their murderers could seldom sleep peacefully in their graves. People who had committed suicide often came back as "gjengangere". At other times, people came back from the grave because they had left something undone. Most often they needed someone to help them do this, before they could finally be at peace. The "gjenganger" in the Scandinavian tradition took on an entirely corporeal form. It normally had no spectre-like qualities whatsoever. In older traditions, the "gjenganger" was very malicious and violent in nature , coming back from the grave to torment its family and friends. Their relatives took extensive precautions to make sure they stayed in their graves. This tradition of the violent "gjenganger" goes back to the Viking Age, where they are present in many of the Icelandic sagas, among others: Grettis saga, Eyrbyggja saga and The Saga of Eric the Red. In this tradition, the "gjenganger" was a mortal creature. An example of this is Grettir slaying the "gjenganger" Glámr with his sword. These Viking-age "gjengangere" were often called "draugr", and the two are likely to be different names for the  same phenomenon. Protection and prevention. People had numerous ways of both defending themselves against the "gjenganger", and stopping people from becoming one in the first place. The tradition of a pile of stones or twigs ("varp") often marked a place where someone has died. It was believed that when you passed this place, you should throw another stone/twig on the "varp", to commemorate what had happened there. Doing so would sometimes bring luck on your further travels, while not doing so would result in bad luck and dangerous accidents. Many of these "varps" have now disappeared, but in a  few places the "varp" is marked with a sign or something similar. Modern Era. In slightly newer tradition, the "gjenganger" remains a violent entity, though in a less direct way, now becoming more of a disease-spreader. These "gjengangere" would attack people with their so-called dead man's pinch ("dødningeknip"). The pinch was often administered when the person was asleep. Both the forest creature ("huldra") and the water spirits ("nøkken") were also accused of doing the same, using bites instead of pinches, often aimed at the victim's face. This belief in beings attacking people in their sleep was  used as a warning against going to sleep in specific places; near the graveyard, mountains or water. In later Swedish folklore, a distinction is made between the traditional "gjenganger", in Swedish called "gengångare", and another type of ghost known as "gast". Whereas the "gengångare" looked virtually identical to a living human, the "gast" was known to be transparent and/or skeletal in appearance, making it impossible to see who the phantom had been while alive. And whereas the Swedish version of the "gengångare" were usually said to be rather harmless, it was the "gast" who was known to cause diseases. They  were also known to cause accidents and scare people for no apparent reason other than that they enjoyed doing so. Today it mostly compares with the modern perception of ghosts, most often being ethereal in form, and non-violent in nature. The word "gjenganger" is being used less, the contemporary word ghost ("spøkelse") having mostly taken over. Where the term "gjenganger" does occur, it may be treated simply as a synonym for ghost. The corresponding verbal phrase walk again ("gå igjen") is just one way of saying "haunt" with reference to ghosts.