Niðagrísur - The Ghost of an Unnamed Child and the Shadow of Patriarchy

The Niðagrísur is one of the most unsettling figures in Faroese folklore, a supernatural being born not just from death, but from societal shame and silence. Its origins are deeply tied to the Faroese past as a rigidly Christian society, where baptism was believed essential for salvation. To die unbaptized meant eternal unrest. A soul without a name, without rites, could never enter heaven.

According to legend, the Niðagrísur is the spirit of an infant killed and buried in secrecy, often by women who had given birth out of wedlock. These were babies carried to full term in silence, then strangled or drowned, hidden away from a society that offered no mercy. These acts were not born of cruelty, but of desperation. In a world where sex outside marriage meant ruin, these women had no safe place to turn. If discovered, they could lose everything; work, home, respect, even life itself. And so, alone and terrified, they buried their newborns without names.

Without a name, these souls were said to walk the earth, unable to rest, taking the form of small, swollen, dimly red infants, like bundled babies or bloated fetuses. But there’s something curious in these tales: the Niðagrísur haunts men. It tangles itself around their feet in the dark, leading them astray. If it slips between a man’s legs, he’s said to die within the year.

In one story, a housemaid in the priest's rectory at Ónagerði killed her newborn and buried it. The child became a Niðagrísur, and it came back, not to haunt her, but the priest Harra Klæmint and demanded to be burried in holy ground. Niðragrísur appeared night after night, sucking on his toes while he slept. It drove him to exhaustion. He became thin and broken, begging for help. Eventually, he called for the wizard Guttormur í Múla, who managed to banish the creature. But the question lingers: why was the priest the one it haunted? Could he have been the father?

Why is it always men the Niðagrísur comes for?

We can only wonder: were these stories whispered from woman to woman; women who had been raped, seduced, or coerced by powerful men such as priests, landowners, or masters? In a time when sex outside of marriage meant disgrace, loss of livelihood, or complete social rejection, many women were left without choices. They killed their children not because they wanted to, but because they had nowhere to turn. And the men? They walked away with no consequences.

So perhaps the Niðagrísur was more than just a ghost. Perhaps it was a myth women told themselves, that something would come back and haunt the men who had abandoned them, punished them, and left them with impossible decisions. That justice, if not in life, then in legend, would be served.

Today, abortion is still illegal in the Faroe Islands. Faroese women still don’t fully have control over their own bodies. But these stories, hundreds of years old, show us that abortion, and the pain, shame, and silence around it, is not new in our culture. Women have always found ways to reclaim their bodies, even in the darkest of times.

The Niðagrísur is not just a terrifying folklore figure. It’s a symbol. A shadow of injustice. And in many ways, it feels more relevant than ever. Faroese women have been fighting for bodily autonomy for centuries , and they still are.