 Stories change over time, as does the creatures that dwell within them. Sometimes traditions from different ages clash, quite literally in this Norwegian tale of two terrors, the sea drogue and the land droger. Like so many Norwegian stories it starts with booze. But the booze will have to wait until I give a little background. Long before the droger were resurrected as zombie viking axe fodder in games like Skyrim and God of War, these Norse ideas of the undead melded with Christian ideas imported from the continent. Over the centuries the droger morphed into the oceanic drowning spirit called Drogen, whose folklore survived into modern times. Growing up in the 1980s I still remember my grandparents jokingly speaking of Drogen to scare me to behave while out fishing. Drogen is most often a single entity, a sort of oceanic troll or embodiment of those lost at sea. It can attack and drown lone fishermen, or appear as a harbinger of death at sea, but sometimes it can come up on land. And while there are many variations of today's story it often starts on Yulafden, on Christmas Eve. As the Yuletide festivities drag on, a young man called Ula goes to the boat house to fetch another bucket of booze as you know we all need some buckets of booze to get into the spirit. But there in the boat house sitting silently on the bucket is Drogen himself staring out at sea. Being a little bit tipsy Ula takes a sharp stick used to drag large fish up in the boats and stabs Drogen in the back so it falls into the ocean. Now Drogen doesn't really appreciate this and Ula realises his folly. With Drogen at his heels he runs for his life until he gets to the cemetery. In some versions he screams for hell shouting Christian souls rise up from your graves and defeat this beast. In other versions Ula just knows that landed Drogen doesn't like the sea droger. As he runs to safety Ula hears all hell break loose behind him. Of course no one believes a word he says as he burst back into the Yuletide party. You had a little bit too much to drink they laugh. But the next day as they wake from their Christmas stupor they find the graves burst open and the cemetery full of seaweed. This tale is what's often classified as a migratory legend which means it survives in several different versions over a huge geographic area. Many of these versions don't even have any droger in them but local encounters of ghosts and spirits with robbers or even enemy soldiers. So if you have any similar stories from your part of the world please do share and if you'd like more stories about ancient drogers or other Norse hauntings stay tuned.