Mare

Overview

The pan-European nightmare spirit — the 'mare' from which English 'nightmare' (literally 'night-mare') is derived. A malicious entity, typically female, in Germanic and Slavic folklore that 'rides' people's chests at night.

Details

Origin:

Across Germanic-, Scandinavian-, and Slavic-speaking Europe, with cognates and continuations into modern French (cauchemar) and many other languages.

Regions:

Germanic Europe, Scandinavia, Slavic Europe

First Reported:

Early medieval

Full Account

The Mare is the broad pan-European nightmare spirit known in Germanic, Scandinavian, and Slavic folklore. The English word 'nightmare' itself preserves the term: nyght-mare in Middle English meant a 'mara' visiting at night. The mare is described as a malicious entity, typically female, who sits, walks, or 'rides' on the chest of a sleeping person, causing bad dreams, suffocating sensations, sweating, and the experience now identified as sleep paralysis. The word descends from Old English mære and Old Norse mara, both from Proto-Germanic *marōn, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to crush' or 'to press'. The same element entered French as -mar in cauchemar (caucher 'to press' + mare). In Scandinavia, the earliest narrative reference is in Snorri Sturluson's Ynglinga saga (c. 1230), which describes the death of King Vanlandi by a mara conjured by the Sámi sorceress Huld. In German tradition the mare is closely linked to the Alp (Albtraum, 'alp-dream', is the standard German word for nightmare); in Polish and Czech tradition, the zmora / můra may be either a demonic being or the involuntarily wandering soul of a living person. Modern sleep medicine identifies the underlying experience as sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucination.

Also Known As

• Mære (Old English)
• Mara (Old Norse / Old High German)
• Mahr (German)
• Cauchemar (French)
• Mareridt / Mareritt (Danish / Norwegian)
• Mara (Swedish)

Etymology

Origin:

Old English mære, Old Norse mara, Old High German mara, all from Proto-Germanic *marōn, ultimately from a PIE root meaning 'to crush, press, oppress'.

Meaning:

'Crusher' / 'oppressor' — the spirit that presses on the sleeper's chest.

First Use:

Attested in Old English and Old Norse from the early medieval period; the compound 'nightmare' is attested in Middle English from the late 13th–14th century.

Timeline

• 1230-01-01 — Snorri Sturluson's Ynglinga saga records King Vanlandi's death by mara (Earliest narrative reference to a mare in Scandinavian literature)
• 1300-01-01 — Middle English compound nyght-mare attested (Modern English word 'nightmare' enters the language)
• 1781-01-01 — Henry Fuseli paints The Nightmare, depicting an incubus on a sleeper's chest with a horse looking on — visual touchstone for the European mare tradition (Defining image of the mare in Western art)

Sightings & Evidence

Cultural Significance

Across Germanic and Slavic Europe the mare was treated as a real cause of bad dreams and chest-pressure, requiring protective measures.

Related Phenomena

• Mara — Continental and Slavic spelling of the same nightmare spirit
• Alp — German nightmare creature; German Albtraum 'alp-dream' = nightmare
• Old Hag — Newfoundland sleep-paralysis tradition
• Kanashibari — Japanese sleep-paralysis tradition
• Incubus / Succubus — Latin Christian sleep-attack demons

Tags

Sources

• Mare (folklore) — Wikipedia
• Heimskringla (including Ynglinga saga)
• Deutsche Mythologie
• Sleep paralysis and the structure of waking-nightmare hallucinations — Dreaming