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-Norse *ᛞᚨᚱᚨᚢᚷᚨᛉ (*dᵃraugaʀ, “revenant, ghost, phantom; deceiver”), 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)

2. (folklore) 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.

3. (Old East Norse) based on descendants + cognates: deceiver; nomen agentis to an attested cognate to Old Saxon bidriogan, Old High German triogan (“to mislead, deceive”)^[1]

• Faroese: dreygur
• Icelandic: draugur
• Norn: (unattested) drog
  • Scots: drow, trow (effected by troll (troll))
    • English: drow
• Norwegian: draug, drøg, drog, drauv, drøv, drov
• Old Danish: drog
• Old Swedish: *drøgher
  • Swedish: drög, dröger (dialectal, archaic)
• Swedish: (regional surviving ON-form, obsolete) draugr m
• → Danish: drauge, dravge (learned)
• → English: draugr, draug (learned)
  • → English: Draugr
• → Swedish: draug (learned)

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

draugr m

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

• Icelandic: draugur

• Richard Cleasby, Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1874) “draugr”, in An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 1st edition, Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, page 102
• Zoëga, Geir T. (1910) “draugr”, in A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, page 92; also available at the Internet Archive
• drög in Rietz, J. E. Svenskt dialektlexikon