Why do vampires fear the sun?

Answer 1

Most fiction now depicts vampires burning up in sunlight, either slowly or instantly, and sunlight is always lethal. However, this was started in 1922 in the German movie Nosferatu.

In the original folklore and stories of vampires, sunlight did not kill a vampire. In fact they did not really fear the sun. It was, at best, an inconvenience. Bats come out at night, and sleep during the day, does sunlight kill them?

Same as vampires, they were just nocturnal creatures, and came out at night. It was a fear thing as part of the myths. Arabian vampires came out during the day and slept at night, but see, deserts were more feared during the day, where the heat could kill you in a few hours.

Any fear in the folklore that vampires had of the sun, was because this was when they were most vulnerable to death. They were asleep. Try using a hammer and a stake to kill a vampire that is awake and moving, they move so fast, are so strong, can turn into mist, shapeshift, control your mind, it was impossible to do.

But when they were asleep, you could stake it in the heart, no fight. In fact the old folklore, the only way to kill a vampire was not as take, that only stopped it from moving, you had to take off its arms and legs, and burn the entire thing to actually kill it.

Bram Stokers Dracula, he did not die in sunlight either. He was weaker in sunlight, did not have access to all of his abilities, but he could move freely in sunlight and not die. The fear of the sun we see in fiction now is just a modern interpretation, a modern trope added to vampires. Original vampires had little to fear of the sun, it was the fear of sleeping, being able to be killed, during this time.