The Actions of the Hugr in Traditional Nordic Folk Beliefs
Winifred Hodge Rose
“I know a tenth (spell-song): If I see tun-riders (witches) playing aloft, I can make it happen that they wander astray from their home-hamas, from their home-hugrs.” (Havamal vs. 155)
In this article we’ll look at a particular perspective on Hugr, namely its role in the folk beliefs of Nordic peoples in past and recent times concerning uncanny, occult, and ‘magical’ occurrences and activities. My purpose in this article is to continue our exploration of the Hugr soul’s nature by looking at traditional understandings of this soul’s behavior and abilities, focusing on the very rich lore of Scandinavian folk belief.
I will make frequent reference here to an article, “The Concept of the Soul in Nordic Tradition,” by the Swedish academic and folklorist, Dag Strömbäck (who also wrote the seminal book Sejd, which I wish was translated into English!). This article is one of the most useful and interesting writings I’ve found, and very relevant to the study of soul lore as I conceive it.
One thing to note is that Strömbäck describes folk beliefs about various soul-beings as though they were all one soul with different names: Hugr, Hugham, Fylgja, Hamr, Vord or Vard, even Draugr as it is colloquially used in some regions. As he describes in his article, the same tales and descriptions are told about the activities of souls given these different names, depending on where and when the tales were collected. A story told about the Fylgja in one instance, for example, is told with the same details about the Hugr or Hama in another instance.
All of them have this defining characteristic, however: these souls can all emanate or externalize themselves under certain circumstances. They each belong to a living human and normally dwell within that human or very close to them. Under various circumstances, which I shall describe, the souls can exit the body, or emanate their power, acting independently at a distance from their human’s body, sometimes independently of the conscious awareness and intention of the human.
Strömbäck is not concerned, in this article, about firmly distinguishing between different soul-terms, but in my soul lore studies, I am! Nevertheless, it is clear to me that the distinguishing boundaries between our different souls are very porous and fuzzy, with a good deal of overlap and interconnection between them, but also distinctive differences. Along these lines, I agree with the interpretation of “fylgja” as being any disembodied soul or spirit which “follows” or accompanies a living person, since that is the literal meaning: fylgja = follower (see DeVries p. 224f, and Grimm p. 874f). This follower can be an animal fetch, a kinfylgja / Dis or guardian ancestress, a vard or watcher / guardian spirit, a doppelganger, a form of disembodied spirit-energy giving intuitions or forebodings, or whatever.
Thus, following Strömbäck, descriptions of what a Fylgja does can relevantly be applied to the Hugr soul as well as to other types of daemon or disembodied spirits. A number of scholars, in addition to Strömbäck, find very little if any difference between the Vord or Vard and the Hugr, including Jan DeVries, whose thoughts I described in my previous articles about the Hugr. One of the root-complexes for the word ‘Hugr’ that I discussed in my article Hunting the Wild Hugr comes from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘watchful, wary, careful’, showing the relationship between the Hugr-spirit and the Vard or Vord spirit, whose name means ‘ward / warder’.
I will begin by describing several types of occult activities of which the Hugr is capable, according to traditional Nordic beliefs. These include the following: 1) The occult behavior of the Hugr when motivated by desire, longing, envy, hatred and revenge. 2) Hugr as a fore-runner, harbinger, and warder: running ahead of the person, bringing forebodings and warnings, and serving as a warder. 3) The Hug-ham: the Hugr exiting the body as an independent entity and performing actions at a distance. This includes the Hugr as a Troll-wind. Another area where the Hugr is involved is in rune-work and spell-casting, which I cover in The Occult Activities of the Hugr, Part II.
Desire, Longing, Envy, Hatred
In my article, Who is Hugr, I concluded that the root of Hugr within us, its defining impulse or motive, is Desire / Wish / Longing, rooted in the Heart, which bears the desire for love and friendship, and sometimes also desires related to envy, hatred and vengefulness. The power of Thought, which is so characteristic of the Hugr, is the primary mode that Hugr uses to act upon and achieve its desires.
Consider this: in all older traditional societies I am aware of, the activity of Thought was assumed to occur in the heart, not in the brain. The philosophical / scientific idea of thought and emotion being strictly separate activities, one in the brain and one in the heart, is a relatively modern one which held sway for a few centuries since the Enlightenment, but is now, through modern neurology, being shown to be a highly oversimplified assumption. Thoughts and emotions are intertwined and involve chemical and electrical (and microbiological) activity over large areas of the body, including the heart and the gut as well as the brain, nervous, and endocrine systems. So both traditionally and scientifically, the Hugr’s characteristic mixture of strong thought and strong emotion makes sense.
Having discussed in a previous article (Who is Hugr?) how Hugr is involved in the desires of love and friendship, I will now move on to describe examples of how desirous thoughts result in uncanny and occult expressions of envy, a powerful motivator of people’s Hugrs generally, and especially those living in small, close-knit, insular, resource-constrained societies. The following paragraphs are summarized from Strömbäck’s article, except as otherwise noted. I include my own comments in square brackets.
In Norwegian dialects ‘hugsa’ means ‘to watch, observe, wish, have a desire for’ (p. 12). [Envy arises from observing that others have something which you lack, and want. The Faroese Dictionary expands these meanings: hugadr means ‘wishful or desirous of something, eager,’ etc., while hugbit (hug-bite) = ‘a strong desire for what one knows, especially sees or hears, another person has; envy with unfortunate effects for the possessor.’]
In Dalarna district hugsa means ‘by strong thoughts to cause somebody to feel ill.’ This ‘hugsa’ was not necessarily intentional ill will. An anecdote tells of a grandmother watching a young girl eating something good, and simply thinking to herself how delicious it looked. The girl immediately became ill. A little while later when the grandmother realized that her thoughts had unintentionally made the girl ill, then the girl quickly recovered. (p. 12.) [Here we see a phenomenon where observation and intention change the outcome of an event, mirroring the ‘observer effect’ in quantum mechanics. It has clear implications for some forms of modern magic.] If one suffers from depression and low spirits, lack of energy and ability, this is attributed to the Hugr of someone who does not like you and sends bad wishes your way. (p. 13-14.)
Traditional accounts from folklorists in this area associate hugsa with ‘strong thoughts (stora tankar), or heavy thoughts’ combined with a ‘firm look from a person’s eyes’, together called hugsning. This can result in animate objects losing their power and effectiveness, and inanimate objects stopping their proper functions. (p. 13). In the Sogn-district of Norway, they spoke of a person’s Hugr being so strong that it could do great damage to things at work. For example, if such a person came near brewing beer, or milk in the dairy shed, his Hugr could cause it to spoil and the vats to leak. If a Hug-strong person eagerly desired an alcoholic drink, the keg would bubble and splash as he approached it (p. 14). (End of summary.)
It’s interesting to compare this phenomenon with the Saxon / Anglo-Saxon idea of ‘Hugi wallan: the Hugi upwelling or wallowing within the breast, around the heart, when it is powerfully moved. In one case we have the ‘inner whelming or wallowing’ within the breast where Hugr resides (see Who is Hugr?), and in the other case it is external containers of liquid doing the same thing when someone with a powerful Hugr approaches.
Some of these are examples of unintentional harm caused by people who have strong Hugrs but basically good characters. But outright envy, anger and related negative emotions, rooted in the Hugr and leading to occult or magical phenomena, apparently played a heavy role in traditional Nordic society.
I will note here that when I lived in Greece for many years during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, I observed many convincing instances of actions of the Evil Eye, generated by envy, which involves beliefs very similar to the Nordic ones. In particular, I was cautioned that since I have blue eyes, and blue-eyed people are especially prone to cause the Evil Eye even if they don’t intend to, I should be careful how my actions were construed by others. This required me, among other things, to be restrained about how I admired other people’s possessions and circumstances, and especially their babies and children, since admiration could be construed as envy and thus cause the Evil Eye (severe headaches, illness, bad luck, loss). Babies are particularly sensitive to the Evil Eye, and ill-intentioned people apparently cover up their envy over another person’s lovely baby by pretending to admire it, but covertly causing it to fall ill. I have read that many other traditional cultures around the world have similar beliefs about envy causing bad luck and illness through occult means, so traditional Nordic cultures are not alone in this!
Here are some examples of Envy / Avund or Ovund in Nordic cultures and the harm it can cause. First, another summary from Strömbäck. In ancient Scandinavia ‘avund’ (envy) was considered to be something with real physical power, emanating from the Hugr of a malignant person. This is called ovundhugen in old records, and there was a folk-saying that it was so powerful it could consume stone. This is illustrated by the following anecdote. There was an old woman known for her ‘ovundhug’, and one of her neighbors decided to test its power. The neighbor woman chose a time when the ovundhug-woman was watching her from a distance, then stooped and picked up a pebble. Pretending it was something valuable, she quickly tucked it into her pocket and hurried home. There, she put the pebble secretly into a chest, and took it out to look at it from time to time. Eventually, the pebble was eaten away by the ovundhug. Stromback proposes that behind a Norwegian charm such as ‘ek snui uppa thik heipt ok ofund’ (I turn upon you hatred and envy) lies the terrible threat of turning loose an ill-intentioned Hugr upon that person, a threat that could lead almost to death by occult means (p. 15-16).
This brings to mind a scene from the Greenlandic Poem of Atli (in the Poetic Edda), which takes place after Atli has brutally killed Gudrun’s brothers, and she has taken revenge by killing her and Atli’s young sons and serving them to Atli for dinner, unbeknownst to him. (Vs. 81 in Old Norse, vs. 88 in translation.) Not surprisingly, Gudrun and Atli are consumed by hatred for each other, and the poem describes them sitting together in the same building, “sending far-hugi, throwing heiptyrdi” at each other. The word ‘far’ means ‘dangerous, inimical, damaging’, and ‘heiptyrdi’ means ‘words of hatred’.
These two people, Gudrun and Atli, were known as ulf-hugr, having wolfs-hugr, and hard-hugr, meaning strong, courageous, determined, but also cruel and ruthless. Gudrun was described as ‘stor-hugud’ (vs. 71) or strong-hugr. Compare this description of their behavior with Strömbäck’s summary I discussed above, where Nordic folklore informants described ‘hugsa’ as ‘strong thoughts: stora tankar’ combined with a ‘firm look’ and believed this was the cause of hugsning, the Hugr having an effect on other people and objects.
Gudrun and Atli were not simply sulking and insulting each other like grumpy kids in this scene of the poem: they were directing their powerful Hugrs with laser-like intensity at each other with the firm intention (hyggjum) of causing severe harm. In the rest of the poem Gudrun conspires with her nephew Hogni to bring about Atli’s death, and later tries (unsuccessfully) to kill herself. These dire outcomes were shaped, I am sure, while these two inimical spouses ‘sent far-hugi’ at each other, setting grim orlog in motion.
The practice of turning the ofund / avund, the envious and corrosive form of the Hugr, against someone is attested to in Bang’s compendium of Norse spells and charms, which gives at least eight magical spells against ‘Avund’, dated from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. Avund, in most of these spells, is treated as a being, an evil spirit, which ties in with Hugr’s daemon nature and with the Hugham, the externalized Hugr in a shape of its own. This Avund-spirit is very likely to be the envious Hugr of a person, living or dead; as Strömbäck stated, above, the term for a person with such a Hugr is ‘ovund-hugen.’
Two of Bang’s spells mention the ‘Avundmand’ or Avindsmænd, the ‘envy-man’ (e.g. #104). I am not clear whether this refers to a living human, in the same way that Strömbäck described the old woman with ‘ovundhug’, above, or whether it is another way of naming the Avund-spirit or externalized Hugr, separate from the person, which is clearly referenced in the other spells about Avund. Some of the spells seem to be intended to protect against a person wielding Avund, while others are against a wandering spirit apparently not associated directly with a human. Spell #73 works to protect a cow from ‘avind’ of both ‘onde’ or wights, and from ‘mennesker’ or humans. Both of these perceptions of the Avund fit well with my understanding of the Hugr soul, which can be strongly motivated by envy, and is a daemon-soul which can operate either from within a person or independently of the person it is associated with. The avund-spirit or ovund-hugen, in these spells, afflicts domestic animals and humans with illness, loss of productivity, malaise and misfortune.
Strömbäck describes the Danish Valby amulet with the runic inscription ‘vidhr ofund’, ‘against envy’, which offers another example of magical defense against the envious Hugr (p. 15).
Hugr as Fore-runner, Hugbod, and Warder
Summarizing again from Strömbäck: the Hugr flying ahead of a visitor, or ahead of an enemy who is approaching, is recognized as a very common phenomenon in Nordic folklore (also told about Vord or Vard, Fylgja, Hama, and Draug). This fore-runner or foreboding aspect of Hugr could express itself in many ways: an itch, a sneeze, a noise caused by no one present, yawning, severe sleepiness. One of my favorite terms is ‘nasehug’ or nose-hugr, where the visitor’s Hugr flies up the nose of the host, ahead of the person’s arrival, causing sneezing or itching. (I’m not sure my Hugr really wants to do this, though!) Another strange aspect of the Hugbod (Hugr-foreboding) is that it can cause a severe itching sensation, about a day prior to a person’s death or injury to the part of the body which had been itching; for example, on the nape of a person who is decapitated the next day. Strömbäck suggests that the famous line spoken by the three witches or wyrd-women in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,” is another example of the same phenomenon. (pp. 8-11.)
I see all of these examples, trivial though they may seem, as an effort of the Hugr to communicate through the Hama—the soul which constructs and maintains the physical body and its actions. (See my article The Shape of Being Human: The Hama Soul.) Considering the very close connection, even overlap, between the Hugr, Hugham, Hama, and the Hamingja as a luck-bearing spirit, this would make a great deal of sense. Most of us, most of the time, are more aware of what our body, our Lichama, is telling us through annoying messages like itching or yawning, than we are aware of vague ‘forebodings’ somewhere underneath our everyday attention level. The Hugr is a watcher, a lookout, a keen observer, and among other things it is aware of the shifting and turning of ‘luck’ or hamingja, and the effects this may be bringing our way in the near future. As our Warder or Vard, it tries to make us aware and to mobilize us toward action by triggering the Lichama to grab our attention. If we are wise, we then ‘take counsel’ with our Hugr, as I describe in Who is Hugr and in my Study Guides for the Hugr: we listen to our Hugr’s rede and act accordingly.
If we take the Vard or Vord spirit to be essentially the same as the Hugr, as understood by both Strömbäck and by DeVries (p. 221-2), then we can add more anecdotes and descriptions to expand our grasp of Hugr / Vard, such as the following from Strömbäck. The Vard could sometimes be heard, but not seen, as footsteps or the closing of a door, when apparently no one was there. After a little while, the visitor or the absent householder would arrive and make the same sounds that had previously been heard. The fore-runner spirit that causes this phenomenon is variously called Vard, Vale,Varsel, Forbo (foreboding), and other names. Stromback mentions that the same phenomena are recognized, under different names, in England and Scotland. (p. 9.)
Strömbäck quotes another famous folklorist (Gunnar Olof Hylten-Cavallius, 1864): “The Vard (literally: the guardian) is a being attached to an individual, a spirit who accompanies a person wherever he goes, and sometimes reveals itself either as a glimmer or in the form of a person as a second self (hamn), a phantom. The presence of the Vard can even be felt, both by other people and by the individual himself when he is out of doors at night. The expressions used for this are: …. ‘he has the glimmer with him’, ‘he has the vard with him’” (p. 17). I discuss the ‘glimmer’ and the ‘second self’ further, in The Occult Activities of the Hugr, Part II.
The Wind of the Trollwife
This evocative phrase comes from the 12th Century “Skaldskarpamal” of the Prose Edda (p. 154), presented by Snorri Sturlason as a kenning or synonym for ‘hugr.’ The trollwife is another word for a witch or sorceress. I take this phrase to refer to the Hugr bursting invisibly but powerfully out of a person and acting at a distance, usually in a damaging way. DeVries (p. 221) writes that the Hugr could exit the body as breath or wind, and the stronger a person’s Hugr was, the more dangerous the wind. He compares this to the folk-belief, up until recent times, that witches travel around in a whirlwind.
Here is a summary from Strömbäck’s article describing this phenomenon.
A strong Hugr is considered capable of ‘fljuga a’ or ‘laupa a’, to ‘fly at, or attack’ something. People may find that their Hugr does this even without their intention. This uncontrolled Hugr activity was considered disgraceful, and those who were basically good-natured but possessed such Hugrs had to be especially careful about their thoughts and desires, and how their neighbors were affected. A tale is told of a man who was known to have a such a ‘hugham’ (a Hugr that takes shape outside a person), on his way to visit a farm. Before he arrived (here is Hugr as a fore-runner), his Hugr ‘flew at’ the farmer’s only cow. When the visitor arrived he found them hauling away a dead cow. The farmer, apparently aware that the visitor did not intend this destruction, said nothing, but the visitor knew his Hugr was responsible and handed over money for a new cow. (p. 14)
Hugham: The Hugr Takes Shape
This is perhaps the most dramatic magical act of the Hugr as seen in Nordic lore, and as far as I can tell from my reading, it is not the result of a magical ritual or spell, or often, even a magical intent. The extrusion of a personal double or a person’s soul in animal form seems to ‘just happen’ when circumstances warrant it, among people who are shape-strong or ‘hamrammr.’ There is conflation, overlap, or confusion of soul words in the old tales of shapeshifting, with different terms applied to the shapeshifted being in tales from different times and places, even when the details are pretty much identical. This shape can be referred to in the tales and anecdotes as the Hugr, Hugham, Mannahugr, Vard or Vardogr, Hama, Gongham (‘walking shape’), Fyreferd, or Fylgja, in different accounts. Sometimes it is even called the Draugr, as Strömbäck mentions, though modern Heathens generally think of the draugr as a revenant, a re-animated corpse, which is definitely not the Hugr’s domain. (The draugr is a phenomenon of the Hama / Lichama, in my understanding.) This many-named etheric shape can sometimes be visible to anyone, other times is only visible to those with second sight. It can take action at a distance from the originating person, sometimes with their conscious intent, but often without their knowledge. (Strömbäck p.16-17.)
If a person’s thoughts were evil they could hurt others by making them objects of intense hatred, envy or discontent. One could activate the Hugr in this way, sending it in specific directions with specific intentions. One resulting phenomenon was called ‘re-hug’ (riding-Hugr) or ‘re-ham’ (riding Hama). The Hugr would be sent to a stable or barn and choose a horse or a cow to ride upon, goading it on for hours and leaving it exhausted and unproductive. (p. 17-18)
Strömbäck discusses at length the first documented witch trial in Icelandic history, told in the Eyrbyggja Saga (ch. 15, 16), and dating from sometime during the 9th to early 11th centuries. The protagonist, Gunnlaug, is invited by the witch Katla to spend the night with her, but he refuses her advances. Later he is found unconscious from exhaustion, bloodstained over his shoulders and legs. Katla is known as a ‘kveld-ridha’, an evening-rider, and Strömbäck mentions other women in the sagas and folktales known as kveldridhur, myrkridhur (darkness-rider), or trollridhur (witch / sorcerer-riders) who would likewise ride men against whom they bore a grudge, causing injury, exhaustion and illness. They were able to let their Hugr take on hamr or shape, and thus materialized, able to do harm to humans and animals by this night-time spirit-riding. Not only women, but men as well, sometimes engaged in these activities.
Strömbäck provides a discussion of the Havamal verse I quoted at the beginning, where Odin says he knows spells to confuse flying witches—tunridhur (fence-riders)—causing them to lose their way when attempting to return to their own Hugrs and Hamas, their own ordinary minds and shapes. Strömbäck explains this phenomenon as something that occurs while the physical body is sleeping, allowing the Hugr (or other soul / spirit) to exit the body and act independently. (Pp.18-21)
A similar phenomenon occurs in various sagas when observers see a night-time battle taking place between two spirit-animals, who are later discovered to be the Manna-hugur or Hug-hamur (or Fylgjur) of sleeping humans pursuing their feud by occult means (p. 6).
I will now summarize another scholar, Jan DeVries, on the subject of the Hugr. He defines Hugr as not only thought and spirit, but also as wish, desire, and longing, as I have previously discussed. This ‘Wish’ (Wunsch) can be so strong that it condenses itself into a magical being, which can exit from a person and take visible or audible form. The expression for this is hugen tok ham pa, that is ‘the Hugr shaped a form (hama) for itself’. As an example: a farmer badly needed another horse for his busy harvesting operation, but his only available horse was in a mountain pasture some distance away. The farmer was too occupied with the harvest to be able to leave and get the horse, but his wish took form as an invisible but audible being who was heard moving around the herder’s hut and mountain pasture where the horse was. (p. 220-1.)
There is much more to be said about the occult and magical activities of the Hugr, which I continue in The Occult Activities of the Hugr, Part II.
Bookhoard
Bang, Anton C. Norske Hexeformularer og Magiske Opskrifte. Kristiania I Commission hos Jacob Dybwad, A. W. Broggers Bogtrykkeri, Norway 1900-01. Spells #73, 74, 75, 104, 170, 190, 191, 284.
De Vries, Jan. Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, Band I. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin, Germany, 1956.
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology. Transl. James Steven Stalleybrass. George Bell and Sons, London. 1882.
Jonsson, Finnur. De Gammle Eddadigte. G.E.C. Gads Forlag, Kobenhavn, Denmark, 1932.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, revised edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2014.
Lecouteaux, Claude. Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages. Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 2003. (I did not quote this book directly, but it has many examples relevant to this article.)
Strömbäck, Dag. “The Concept of the Soul in Nordic Tradition” in ARV: Journal of Scandinavian Folklore, Vol. 31, 1975. The Almqvist & Wiksell Periodical Company, Stockholm, Sweden.
Sturlason, Snorri. Edda, transl. & ed. Anthony Faulkes. Everyman, Rutland, Vermont, 1987.
Young, G.V.C., and Cynthia R. Clewer. Føroysk-ensk orðabók – Faroese-English Dictionary. Peel, Isle of Man : Mansk-Svenska Pub. Co. ; Tórshavn, Føroyar. 1985.
This article was first published on this webpage, November 2020.