Asvith
The story of Asmund and Asvith is a medieval Scandinavian tale of being walled up with a flesh-eating corpse. Two sworn friends agree not to be parted by death; the survivor enters the tomb and finds that the dead man wakes each night and eats whatever is alive. He ends it by cutting off the head and pinning the body. It is among the earliest European narratives in which a reanimated corpse is explicitly driven by hunger for flesh.12
- beheading with a sword
- a stake through the body (Saxo)
- burning to ashes (saga version)
When did it first appear?
Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, written around 1200; a parallel in the 14th-century saga of Egil One-Hand and Asmund Berserker-Slayer
What the sources say
Could you outrun it?
Speed class from how the sources describe it (varies), not a measurement.
Sources
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