Vardøger er i norsk folketro en varslende ånd, føreferd, som man hører, sjeldnere også ser, før mennesket den tilhører innfinner seg. Noen ganger kan vardøger være identisk med en vernende følgeånd, fylgje.
As a child and teenager in Aas (Akershus) Norway, I experienced vardogr several times. Most of the time it involved my parents returning home from their evening constitutional. I heard their footsteps on the driveway gravel, how they ascended the stone-floor portico, how they turned the key in the door, and how they entered the house. Then it was quiet -- until the exact same sounds occurred again and they were actually there.
It just happened to me again, for the first time since then. A young man, working as a carpenter on an addition to our house, walked rapidly through a hallway to the kitchen, where bottles of water are available to him in the refrigerator. When he did not return, I went looking for him. He was nowhere in the house, all exit doors were locked, and his pickup truck was not in the yard outside.
I am now 86, healthy and of sound mind, still working full-time as a professor (you can do that at some universities in this country), and I know what a vardogr is. I looked it up in Wikipedia and Store norske, both of which treat it as myth, or "folketro". While it is obviously a phenomenon beyond normal reality, it is still real to the senses of someone experiencing it and has nothing to do with folkeTRO. When is Store norske going to treat it as that?
H. Peter Krosby
Professor of History
State University of New York at Albany
Hello Peter! Thanks for your comment and interest in the article. Even though experiences such as the ones you describe are "real", in the sense that one really has an experience of such-and-such quality, this does not imply that the content of the experience is actual. Experiencing something as happening in the world is not definitive evidence for it actually having happened, as a long list of optical and auditory illusions, mirages, false memories, etc. will attest to. Such gaps between what's observed and what's actual are part of everyday life for everyone, be they old or young, of sound mind or suffering from a pathology.
In the encyclopaedia, we aim to cover any given phenomena using the terms of a scientific, realist ontology. If the content of an experience can't be observed or verified from a third-party perspective, we will inevitably describe it as a belief ("tro"), or in cases such as these: a part of a bigger system of beliefs ("folketro", "religion", "spiritualistisk verdenssyn"). Whether or not there are things which exist outside "normal reality" or that don't have an extension in space-time, these things can't be described as "actual" in the realm of science. In fact, using a scientific vocabulary, we have no way to even describe or conceptualize how this interaction between normal and non-normal reality, physical and non-physical, would take place.
I hope this answers your question!
All the best,
Georg
I appreciate your answer, Georg, and I have no problems with it. As a historian and political scientist (PhD in the former, honorary Pol.dr. in the latter), I am an empiricist, not one of those theoreticians who think they can build a house from the roof down. In my work I insist on hard proof and corroboration. But it is still a reality to me that a person, wide awake, can experience the sort of thing I described. Thanks again! Peter
Kommentarer til artikkelen blir synlig for alle. Ikke skriv inn sensitive opplysninger, for eksempel helseopplysninger. Fagansvarlig eller redaktør svarer når de kan. Det kan ta tid før du får svar.
Kommentarer (3)
skrev H. Peter Krosby
svarte Georg Kjøll
svarte H. Peter Krosby
Kommentarer til artikkelen blir synlig for alle. Ikke skriv inn sensitive opplysninger, for eksempel helseopplysninger. Fagansvarlig eller redaktør svarer når de kan. Det kan ta tid før du får svar.
Du må være logget inn for å kommentere.