Contrary to what you might believe, humans are becoming less common in Geiranger aside from the few families that have neither been involved with hunters nor witches. Other than that, there is the small handful of immigrants or tourist that come to the village. The humans know of the legends and myths about the village, but see them as nothing more than that. If it weren’t for their presence in Geiranger, the small town would not have secrecy when it came to the hunters and witches. Their fued would be surface level, and fights would be eminent and frequent. If they know it or not, the presence of humans keeps the village in some sort of a balance. But as the fight for the beacon is on the cusp, the citizens of Geiranger may no longer be in the dark.
With the introduction of Christianity into Viking culture came the creation of the hunters. They reported directly to the church as the first line of offensive trying to bring to an end the witchcraft that plagued Viking lands. At their creation, every hunter worked in the name of God to remove these abominations. As time progressed, although the church is still the umbrella the hunters work under, many of them no longer practice a religion but instead fight to cleanse Geiranger, seeing all witches as evil. In the present, the hunters have their hands in everything within the village, especially law enforcement. They are all exceptionally trained in combat, offensive and defensive tactics, warding from magic and known to be chameleons in a crowd.
Witchcraft has been around long before Christianity and the hunters. Those who practice magic are referred to as vættr or witches. They can be men or women, and have all sorts of areas of focus. For the Vikings, there magic usually was pulled from nature. They were never the type to disrupt the order of the world. If they took, they gave back, working in a sense of balance and harmony. But, not all witches were as harmonious with their magic. Part of the reason they are seen as evil is because of those who practice the darker magics. They offset the balance of nature, working with blood magic, trying to raise the dead, steal power from other people or dimensions, and using magic for deadly and selfish purposes. Although a majority of the witches are peaceful people, the ones that use dark magic over shadow them and paint a bad picture for all of their kind. Most witches practice within sveits, or covens, believing in the strength in numbers, especially against the strong arm of the hunters.
Vætter are the souls trapped within the Vægher. These are the souls of the exorcised witches, those who were killed under false accusation of being a witch and then the hunters who’ve passed on as part of the witches counter curse. As would be imagined with spirits, they do not age, sleep or need any other of the basic human functions and necessities. Time is relative for them, moving slowly at some moments and then at other moments everything seems to flash by. Their souls are still themselves, holding onto everything that makes them the person they are. But the longer they spend in Vægher the more their souls begin to chip away, piece by piece. The use of magic within this parallel dimension accelerates the deteriorating of their souls. When enough of themselves is gone, the Vætter becomes a poltergeist or demon of sorts, a shadow that terrorizes the souls left. Once at that point, the soul can never be brought back or taken onto Valhalla.
