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Reuploaded to my new account ~Snettelin

("Now the whole earth is at rest").

O yay, more Scandinavian folklore illustrations. This one is themed "night" and "death". Mostly death though.

Kyrkogrimmen was a fearsome ghost set to guard churches and cemeteries from thieves, evil men and other ghosts. It was said that when a church was built, the first living thing that passed the building foundation would be taken and put there alive, and have the church built around it. The building would then acquire not only a body but a soul, and no matter how harmless the being had been in life it turned into a demonlike ghost when becoming a kyrkogrim. Rams, like here, horses or roosters are said to have been the most usual, but the stories insist that humans were also used from time to time.

Nattravnen is only mentioned in the southern provinces of Halland, Skåne and Blekinge. They're big black birds that appear at night, moaning, sighing and screaming and scaring the life out of people. In Halland they're said to be like bird skeletons with wings.

The origin of the birds vary a bit. Some say they are the souls of evildoers chased up from their graves at night by kyrkogrimmen. Hence, the motive.

Description
Reuploaded to my new account ~Snettelin

("Now the whole earth is at rest").

O yay, more Scandinavian folklore illustrations. This one is themed "night" and "death". Mostly death though.

Kyrkogrimmen was a fearsome ghost set to guard churches and cemeteries from thieves, evil men and other ghosts. It was said that when a church was built, the first living thing that passed the building foundation would be taken and put there alive, and have the church built around it. The building would then acquire not only a body but a soul, and no matter how harmless the being had been in life it turned into a demonlike ghost when becoming a kyrkogrim. Rams, like here, horses or roosters are said to have been the most usual, but the stories insist that humans were also used from time to time.

Nattravnen is only mentioned in the southern provinces of Halland, Skåne and Blekinge. They're big black birds that appear at night, moaning, sighing and screaming and scaring the life out of people. In Halland they're said to be like bird skeletons with wings.

The origin of the birds vary a bit. Some say they are the souls of evildoers chased up from their graves at night by kyrkogrimmen. Hence, the motive.