Hidden away in a bone for years, the ghost and Skotta of Ábær was sent on a mission to harass a farmer in northern Iceland. However, they lost control of her, and have since been haunting them all.
On the eastern bank of the glacial river Austari-Jökulsá, north in Iceland an abandoned farm sits with a haunted story that stretches much further back in time and across the northern part of the country. For a long time, the Áabær farm, meaning the farm between rivers, was the location of a Skotta ghost, and because it was a very known ghost story at the time, the origins also have a lot of different versions.
Read more: Check out all ghost stories from Iceland
But to get back to where it all started, we have to travel to Skagafjörður to the time when the ghost was called both The Árbær or Nýibær Skotta, depending on what version of the story you get.
The Nýibær Skotta Origin
Ólafur was the name of a farmer who lived at Tinnársel in Austurdalur in Skagafjörður; he was considered versed in sorcery. Once he was traveling in Svartárdalur in Húnavatnssýsla and came to Bergsstaðir at night, and as he rode past the churchyard, he happened to look in and saw a man wrestling with a newly-raised ghost.
The ghost was just about to overpower him. Then Ólafur called out to the man: “Bite her in the left breast, you cursed one.” Ólafur rode on his way, and it is said that the man used this advice and it worked. But the man conceived envious hatred toward Ólafur for knowing better, and it is said he at once raised the ghost and sent it against Ólafur. Ólafur, however, was prepared with his sorcery and forced the ghost down into a horse or sheep bone, put it in a chest, and kept it there for the rest of his life. But just before his death, he asked his daughter Guðbjörg to burn the bone after he had passed away, but to be careful not to remove the stopper unless she was in dire need.
Fylgur/Fylgja: The Old Norse Ghost
There were many different types of ghosts in Norse mythology and that the vikings believed in. One of them was the Fylgjur or Fylgja ghost, or Attending Spirits that we can find traces back in Iceland since the 12th century. These were originally a ghost of a very physical substance that interacted with the real world as if they were a part of it still.
Read Also: Check out the Irish Fetch ghost, that has a huge resemblance to the norse Fylgja.
Fylgja attached themselves to people that they haunted. They could also attach themselves to buildings or even entire towns. Many stories also talk about it being a generational haunting where the ghost decides to haunt all of the descendants of the original person it cursed. Most often the female line of the family. Perhaps because of its origin as a female spirit.
In the Fylgjur stories from the middle ages, the spirits could be a beneficial one, almost like a messenger to help with the person’s path of life, some sort of totem animal or guiding spirit. But when the folklorist of Iceland started collecting old oral tales from farmers in the 17th century, the Fylgjur ghosts had drastically changed from its pagan old norse roots, throughout time, religious belief and superstition.
One thing that really changed was the Fylgjur’s purpose of haunting the living, and it was rarely to be of any help. Many stories talk about how they were wronged and it caused their death. They then came back to take revenge and were dangerous, even deadly.
Female Icelandic Ghosts
One of the popular names for the female ghosts was Skotta that really means to dangle, like hair or a tail. This comes from the traditional Icelandic headwear women wore together with the Faldbúningur dresses worn since the 17th century. Except the ghosts are said to have the headgear on backwards so it streams behind her like a tail.
Skotta falls under the Old Norse Mythology of a Fylgja, that were supernatural spirits that followed or latched onto people. They could be animals, they could be goddesses or come in dreams.
But the tales of the Fylga evolved and when we read about Skotta, they were not like totem animals or someone coming with your prophecy like in the old sagas. Icelandic ghosts are often described as being not like apparitions, but in real flesh that interacted with the living. And when we read about Skotta, the female version, she was highly dangerous and also deadly.
The Different Variations of the Legend
Now, as most legends that are well known and old, there will be different variations on it. In this case, it’s mainly the names and relations that are jumbled up. Someone says that Ólafur was actually a man called Jón who lived at Ábær and had a daughter named Guðbjörg. In other versions, Jón was Guðbjörg’s husband. In some versions, her husband was called Eiríkur.
At that time there was a farmer at Tinnársel or Nýibær named Sigurður or Guðmundur. He was rather harsh and wanted to keep Ábær’s livestock from grazing there. The couple at Ábær wished to drive Sigurður away, but it did not succeed. Then it came into Guðbjörg’s mind that now would be the time to open the bone. She pulled out the plug, and smoke burst forth from it. Then she saw a fly or smoke fly out of it and immediately changed into the form of a woman, who asked what she should do.
The Skotta is described as being the size of a twelve-year-old girl, though sometimes she has appeared troll-like. She wears a brown homespun skirt and a black wool sweater; sometimes she has been seen in a sheepskin jacket or clothes and with a brown peaked cap without a tassel.
The Haunting of The Skotta of Ábær
When Guðbjörg conjured the ghost that her father had left her, she ordered her at once to go and drive Sigurður away from his farm. In some versions she actually tells the ghost to go kill him.
The ghost-woman went immediately and tormented Sigurður so severely that he had to sleep at other farms, for he said he had no peace to sleep at home because of the devil who pursued him. He managed to defend himself from her killing him, but she left him half-crippled. The following spring Sigurður abandoned the cottage because of this misfortune.
But when Skotta had finished her mission, she returned home to Guðbjörg and asked where she should now go. Guðbjörg was then at a loss for what to say, and so the Skotta began to torment her, and it ended with Guðbjörg becoming insane. Madness has ever since run strongly in her family, and one woman closely related to her, possibly her daughter, Guðrún who killed herself by cutting her own throat.
Many stories were told about the Skotta and still are, of her mischief; she kills both sheep and cattle at Merkigil and elsewhere. Sometimes she is seen climbing up among the beams of the baðstofa and hanging there at night. Once she was seen sitting on a dung heap, throwing manure clods, while Jón and Guðbjörg’s bull was in the cowshed. Once men went to fetch a breeding bull at Miklabær, but just before they came, a heifer in the cowshed let out a terrible bellow and dropped dead. The priest, Reverend J. J., who was there, refused to let them have the bull, saying they had poor spirit-following since the Skotta was with them.
After Guðmundur the farmer had moved away from Nýibær to Krákugerði, he once rode out on Uppsalamýrar at dusk. Before he realized it, it was as if his horse’s legs were swept from under it, and Guðmundur was thrown off and broke his leg. When he stood up again, he saw the Skotta hopping across the moor and disappearing behind a hill.
Once Páll the shepherd fell asleep in the sheep-house at Merkigil, in the place called Miðhús. As he was drifting off, the Skotta came and tried to strangle him, but he woke up, and then she vanished.
When Hjálmar the farmer lived at Nýibær (some say at Bólu), he once came upon the Skotta as she was killing a sheep. He drove her out beyond the Tinná river, and she has never managed to cross it again, for Hjálmar was considered resolute.
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References:
Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri/Draugasögur/Ábæjar-Skotta – Wikiheimild
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Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri/Draugasögur/Árbæjar- eða Nýjabæjar-Skotta – Wikiheimild
Ísmús | Rímur af Fertram og Plató