The Mare (Maran) is an evil female spirit who visits men or animals at night – hence the term ”nightmare”. She is riding her victims, making them sweaty, out of breath and with a feeling of being choked.
The Mare was often a real woman who at night transformed into a malevolent spirit. This could have different reasons. Either the woman didn’t know herself and her transformations were the result of a curse. Other times it was her own evil thoughts which made her into a Nightmare.
In some tales, the Mare is the spirit of dead, unmarried women – and in those tales the ”riding” of her victims takes an erotic shape.
The Mare’s appearance differs in different tales. Sometimes she looks and behaves as a woman, maybe even a real women who lives in the area. Sometimes she is demonic, and other times she has no form but is invisible or in the shape of a mist.
She can’t be stopped by something as simple as a locked door, she can squeeze through keyholes and the smallest crack in the wall. One way to stop her would be to fill all the crackes and holes. Other ways to protect oneself or ones animals against the Mare was to hang a scythe over the bed/the barn door. And the Mare apparently had obsessive thoughts, because if you put out flaxseed or cow hair, she had to stop and count every single one, and didn’t have time to ride her victim that night.
A woman who had been cursed to become a Mare at night could be freed from the curse, if someone had figured her out, and – at the very moment she returned from her nightly excursion – told her that she was a Mare.
There was a young farmhand who was tormented by the Mare every night. He was advised to fill all the cracks and holes in the walls and to seal the windows so the Mare could not enter his room. But he forgot the keyhole. This night however, he was awake when she squeezed through in the form of a mist. So he leapt up and plugged the keyhole, so that she could not escape.
And all of a sudden, a young, pretty girl stood before him. She didn’t know how she had ended up there, but they started to talk and soon fell in love. They got married, lived together happily for many years and even had children together.
But one day, they had a fight, and the husband in his anger unplugged the keyhole and told her that’s where she came from. And with that, he had revealed her to be a Mare, and she transformed back into her spirit form and vanished.
This is an example of a story about marriage between supernatural beings and humans, of which there are many. They follow the same pattern – the being takes human form, and lives together with a human spouse for many years. They are almost always very happy together – but it ends badly when the being remembers who he/she really is, or is called back to where he/she came from. The being then transforms back and leaves for good.
Sources:
Egerkrans, Johan. Nordiska väsen. (2023)
Schön, Ebbe. Älvor, vättar och andra väsen. (1996)
Wall, Tora. Folktrons väsen. (2021)