The Mare is the night-spirit of Scandinavian and Germanic folklore who sits upon the chests of sleepers and brings them suffocating, terror-filled dreams — the very being from whose name the word nightmare descends. A creature of the dark hours, the Mare creeps into the bedchamber while its victim sleeps, settles its crushing weight upon the breast, and rides the dreamer through the night, leaving him gasping, paralysed, and haunted by visions of dread.
The Rider of Sleep
The Mare (Old Norse mara, Norwegian and Swedish mara, Danish mare) gives the second half of the English word night-mare — for the bad dream itself was understood to be the work of this spirit, literally the “mare” that comes by night. She was imagined as a malevolent being, often female, who entered the house through the smallest gap — a keyhole, a knothole, a crack beneath the door — and crouched upon the sleeper’s chest, pressing down with a weight that grew unbearable. The victim, half-waking, would find himself unable to move or cry out, conscious of a smothering presence — the experience now known to medicine as sleep paralysis, which the old belief explained as the Mare’s nightly ride.
Rider of Men and Horses
The Mare did not torment only sleeping people. She was believed to ride horses through the night as well, leaving them in the morning exhausted, lathered in sweat, and with their manes hopelessly tangled into knots — the “marelocks” or elf-locks that betrayed her visit. Trees, too, might be ridden, their twigs twisted into the dense tangles called witch’s-brooms. By these signs a household knew the Mare had come, and dreaded her return; a horse ridden too often by the Mare might sicken and die.
Warding Off the Night-Rider
Against the Mare the folk of Scandinavia deployed many charms. Because she had to count or pass through every opening, objects with many holes or a confusing form — a sieve hung by the bed, a stone with a natural hole (a “hag-stone”) — could trap or repel her. Steel laid in the bed, the placing of one’s shoes pointing away from the bed, charms and prayers, and the blocking of every gap might keep her out. In some traditions the Mare was a living person — a witch or an unlucky soul who left her body at night to ride — and could be caught and unmasked, or freed of the affliction; in others she was a wholly supernatural being of the dark.
Legacy
The Mare is one of the most far-reaching figures of northern folklore, for through the word nightmare she haunts the speech of the whole English-speaking world, and her kindred — the German Mahr, the Slavic mora, and many another night-pressing spirit — spread across Europe. As the folk explanation for sleep paralysis and the terror of bad dreams, she gave a name and a shape to one of the most universal of human night-fears. The rider who crouches on the sleeper’s chest remains, three words deep in our language, with us still.