draugr

• draug

draugr (plural draugrs or draugar)

1. (Norse mythology) An undead creature from Norse mythology, an animated corpse that inhabits its grave, often guarding buried treasure.

• (12th century Icelandic) IPA^(key): /ˈdrɑuɣr̩/

From Proto-Germanic *draugaz (“delusion, mirage, illusion”). Akin to Old Saxon gidrog (“delusion”) and Old High German bitrog (“delusion”), gitrog (“ghost”). See also Finnish raukka.

draugr m (genitive draugs, plural draugar)

1. (Norse mythology) ghost, spirit, undead
   • Þáttr Þorsteins skelks, in 1827, S. Egilsson, Þ. Guðmundsson, Fornmanna sögur, Volume III. Copenhagen, page 200:

     Hann kyndir ofn brennanda, sagði draugrinn.

     "He kindles furnace's fire", said the ghost.

• Icelandic: draugur
• Faroese: dreygur
• Norn: drog
  • Scots: drow (merged with troll)
    • English: drow
• Norwegian Nynorsk: draug, drog
• Norwegian Bokmål: draug
• Old Danish: drog
• Swedish: drög (dialectal, archaic)
• → Swedish: draug
• → Danish: drauge, dravge
• → English: draugr
  • → English: Draugr

Possibly a nominalisation of Proto-Germanic *draugiz (though one would expect the vowel to display umlaut) or related to drjúgr.

draugr m

1. (poetic) dry wood; tree trunk
2. (poetic) (from the sense of tree-trunk) man, warrior

• Icelandic: draugur

• “draugr”, in Geir T. Zoëga (1910) A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• draugr in An Icelandic-English Dictionary, R. Cleasby and G. Vigfússon, Clarendon Press, 1874, at Internet Archive.
• draugr in A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, G. T. Zoëga, Clarendon Press, 1910, at Internet Archive.
• drög in Rietz, J. E. Svenskt dialektlexikon