A Gjenganger (, or ; or ; ) in Scandinavian folklore was a term for a revenant, the spirit or ghost of a deceased from the grave. Etymology has two parts; the prefix is related to "again" or "against", "towards" (compare , ) and ('against'), from ('in, on') and ('straight, direct') and which comes from a word meaning 'foot' or 'walker', thus it means "walking again" as in "walking after death". The form comes from meaning 'again' and originating from meaning "of, away from" but adding the contrastive suffix , in essence meaning "after walking", "walking away from in contrast with close by", again implying walking after death. Characteristics A gjenganger could have several reasons to return from the afterlife. Murdered people and their murderers could seldom sleep peacefully in their graves. People who had committed suicide often came back as gjengangere. At other times, people came back from the grave because they had left something undone. Most often they needed someone to help them do this, before they could finally be at peace. The gjenganger in the Scandinavian tradition took on an entirely corporeal form. It normally had no spectre-like qualities whatsoever. In older traditions, the gjenganger was very malicious and violent in nature, coming back from the grave to torment its family and friends. Their relatives took extensive precautions to make sure they stayed in their graves. This tradition of the violent gjenganger goes back to the Viking Age, where they are present in many of the Icelandic sagas, among others: Grettis saga, Eyrbyggja saga and The Saga of Eric the Red. In this tradition, the gjenganger was a mortal creature. An example of this is Grettir slaying the gjenganger Glámr with his sword. These Viking-age gjengangere were often called draugr, and the two are likely to be different names for the same phenomenon. Protection and prevention People had numerous ways of both defending themselves against the gjenganger, and stopping people from becoming one in the first place. Crucifixes and Christian incantations Painting symbols, especially the cross Coffin was carried three times around the church before being buried. The tradition of a pile of stones or twigs (varp) often marked a place where someone has died. It was believed that when you passed this place, you should throw another stone/twig on the varp, to commemorate what had happened there. Doing so would sometimes bring luck on your further