Summary of The Spooky Saga of the Icelandic Dracula

Overview of The Spooky Saga of the Icelandic Dracula

Slate’s Decoder Ring investigates the strange case of Powers of Darkness (Makt myrkranna), a bizarre Icelandic “translation” of Dracula that turned out to be much more than a simple translation. What begins as a childhood fear of Icelandic undead folklore becomes a literary mystery involving altered text, hidden publication history, possible plagiarism, and a surprising Scandinavian origin story for a radically reworked Dracula.

The Starting Point: Icelandic Folklore and a Childhood Fear of the Undead

• The episode opens with Ásgeir Jónsson, who grew up in rural northwest Iceland hearing medieval sagas full of:
  • elves and trolls
  • ghosts and magicians
  • especially terrifying undead creatures called draugr (often rendered as “droigers” in the transcript)
• These undead were not mindless zombies but persistent, intelligent, corpse-like beings that had to be destroyed physically.
• As a child, Ásgeir was also frightened by Dracula via a Danish TV adaptation and became fascinated by vampires and the undead.

The Discovery of a Strange Dracula Book

• As an adult, Ásgeir found a deteriorating old book in a Reykjavik antiquarian bookstore run by a former pastor.
• The book was called Makt myrkranna / Powers of Darkness and appeared to be an Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
• But it was immediately obvious that this was not a standard translation:
  • it was much shorter
  • major sections of the novel were missing
  • new scenes and characters had been added
  • the book was more sexually explicit
  • Dracula’s character was more political and ideologically charged

How It Differs from Bram Stoker’s Dracula

• The episode contrasts the original novel with the Icelandic version, highlighting how the public image of Dracula is shaped more by later adaptations than by Stoker’s text.
• In Stoker’s original:
  • Dracula is present, but surprisingly little of the book is actually about him
  • the novel is structured through letters, diary entries, and documents
  • the famous castle opening is only the first part of the story
• In Powers of Darkness:
  • the plot moves faster
  • the sexual content is stronger
  • there is a dramatic human sacrifice scene
  • Dracula is presented as a world-domination / power-politics villain, not just a bloodsucker

The First Big Theory: Did Bram Stoker Help Write It?

• The Icelandic edition included a mysterious preface signed only “B.S.”
• Because the initials matched Bram Stoker, some scholars believed Stoker may have:
  • written the preface
  • been involved in the adaptation
  • possibly supplied an earlier, uncensored draft of Dracula
• This led to speculation that Powers of Darkness might be based on a lost version of Stoker’s novel.

Icelandic Publishing Context and the Translator

• The episode explains that around 1900, Iceland had a strong reading culture:
  • households gathered for evening reading
  • magazines and serialized fiction were common
  • translations were often loose, shortened, or adapted for local tastes
• Powers of Darkness was attributed to:
  • Bram Stoker
  • Valdemar Ásmundsson, an Icelandic editor and publisher
• Ásmundsson was a self-taught linguist, literary figure, and political progressive who supported:
  • Icelandic independence
  • women’s rights
  • religious freedom
  • modernity and social reform
• That political worldview may help explain why the Icelandic text leans harder into power, conspiracy, and social conflict.

The Twist: It Was Really Based on a Swedish Version

• The mystery deepened when researchers found that the Icelandic version was not the original source of those changes.
• A Swedish scholar, Rickard Berghorn, discovered an earlier Swedish serialization titled Mörkrets makter (“Powers of Darkness”).
• That Swedish version:
  • predates the Icelandic one
  • contains almost all the weird elements later seen in Icelandic Powers of Darkness
  • is much longer than Stoker’s original Dracula
• This revealed that the Icelandic book was essentially a condensed adaptation of the Swedish reworking, not a unique alternate Dracula.

The Second Twist: The “B.S.” Preface Was Also Dubious

• After the Swedish version surfaced, scholars found that part of the mysterious preface had been plagiarized from the memoirs of a Swedish pastor.
• So the “B.S.” initials likely did not mean Bram Stoker.
• That further weakened the theory that Stoker himself had directly endorsed or authored the strange Nordic version.

Who Actually Wrote the Swedish Version?

• The Swedish edition credits an anonymous “A.E.”
• Like the Icelandic case, the identity of the adapter remains uncertain.
• Scholars believe A.E. was likely a newspaper pseudonym, common in the era.
• The exact identity of A.E. is still debated, but the evidence suggests:
  • the Swedish version was the real source of the major additions
  • the Icelandic text was a later, heavily abridged reworking of that Swedish adaptation

Main Takeaways

• The Icelandic Dracula mystery is real, but not in the way people first thought.
  • It is not a hidden Bram Stoker masterpiece.
  • It is not a straightforward translation.
• The true ancestor of the Icelandic version is Swedish, not English.
  • The Icelandic text likely descended from the Swedish Mörkrets makter.
• These Dracula versions show how stories mutate across cultures.
  • Translators and adapters reshaped the material to fit local tastes, politics, and publishing norms.
• The episode’s bigger point is literary inheritance.
  • Vampire stories constantly copy, remix, and mutate one another.
  • The fun is not just in finding the “original,” but in seeing how each culture makes the vampire its own.

Notable People Mentioned

• Ásgeir Jónsson — Icelandic central bank governor and Dracula sleuth
• Willa Paskin — host/narrator of the episode
• Helen Zaltzman — compared the versions of Dracula
• Valdemar Ásmundsson — Icelandic editor/publisher tied to Makt myrkranna
• Rickard Berghorn — Swedish writer who uncovered the earlier Swedish version
• Hans de Roos — scholar who helped bring the Icelandic version into English

Bottom Line

This episode is a literary detective story about how Dracula was transformed across Scandinavia. What looked like a mysterious Icelandic vampire text turned out to be part of a longer chain of adaptation, remixing, and reinvention—proving that vampire lore, like vampires themselves, is hard to kill and always comes back changed.