thumb|"Grettir feels Kárr's grip": the undead Kárr, a barrow-dweller or haugbúi, attacks the visitor to his barrow. 1902 illustration by [[Henry Justice Ford ]]
Barrow-wights are wraith-like creatures in J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth. In The Lord of the Rings, the four hobbits are trapped by a barrow-wight, and are lucky to escape with their lives; but they gain ancient swords of Westernesse for their quest.
Tolkien derived the idea of barrow-wights from Norse mythology, where heroes of several Sagas fight undead beings known as draugrs. Scholars have noted a resemblance, too, between the breaking of the barrow-wight's spell and the final battle in Beowulf, where the dragon's barrow is entered and the treasure released from its spell. Barrow-wights do not appear in Peter Jackson's film trilogy, but they do feature in computer games based on Tolkien's Middle-earth.
Origins
thumb|upright=0.6|In the [[Grettis saga, Grettir (pictured) fights Kárr, an undead who guards his own barrow.
A wight, from Old English: wiht, is a person or other sentient being.
There are tales of wights, called vǣttr or draugr, undead grave-spirits with bodies, in Norse mythology. In Norway, country people in places such as Eidanger considered that the dead went on living in their tombs as vetter or protective spirits, and up to modern times continued to offer sacrifices on the grave-mounds.
Tolkien stated in his "Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings"<!--reprinted in Hammond&Scull--> that "barrow-wight" was an "invented name", rather than one like "orc" that existed in Old English.
However, the term was used by Andrew Lang in his 1891 Essays in Little, where he wrote "In the graves where treasures were hoarded the Barrowwights dwelt, ghosts that were sentinels over the gold."