Draugr

The draugr is the corporeal revenant of Old Norse literature: a dead man who leaves, or defends, his grave in his own bloated, discoloured body. The Icelandic sagas show it killing shepherds and livestock, emptying whole districts and passing its condition on to its victims. Because ordinary weapons often fail, heroes have to wrestle it down, behead it and burn it to ash. With its physical decay, contagion and need for total destruction of the body, it is the closest medieval European ancestor of the modern zombie.12