Pic: Wikipedia |
This fabulous lecture about the Wild Hunt brings up some interesting points. Although it is mainly Scandinavian countries that are referenced rather than Celtic. There seem to be some similarities in Celtic folklore. |
For instance is The Wild Hunt the same as a Faerie Raid? The Lord of The Wildwood or Cernunnos is seen a leading the Wild Hunt, but this lecture suggests that in some countries The Wild Hunt is lead by a female.
One wonders at the suggestion that the Wild hunt may have been medieval descriptions of a ritual folk-procession !
(First presented as a lecture to the Cambridge Folklore Society at the house of Dr. H.R. Ellis-Davidson)
The Leader of the Wild Hunt
The woman is variously a wood-wife (Germany or Switzerland), a mermaid (W. Jutland), one of the “hulder-folk” (Sweden), or an elf (Denmark). The hunter chasing the woman always appears as a solitary figure. The theme of this supernatural hunt seems to have little connection with the damned lord leading a group of hunters. The red hair and beard of the Swedish “Oden” seem more typical for the Old Norse Thorr (though Odinn is also called Raudhgrani, “Redbeard”).
Celander suggests that this is an independent tradition, with “Oden’s” hunt of the wood-wife taken over from Thorr’s troll-hunt. Thorr is in fact particularly noted for killing giant-women. In “Hárbarzljodh 23,” he says
“Mighty would be the race of etins, if they all lived; there would be no men in Midhgardhr,”
and Thorbjörn Disarskald credits Thorr with more female than male trophies.
Thor
Pic: David Maybury |
Though there is probably insufficient evidence to make more than a tentative association between Thorr’s pursuit of giantesses and the later hunter’s pursuit of supernatural women, especially given the wide spread of the latter, Celander’s suggestion that this version of the Wild Hunt legend may be an independent tradition is entirely plausible. If the hunt for the wood-wife or mermaid is indeed derived from a wholly different source than the large-scale hunt of the dead, which is clearly a later version of the original procession of the dead, then the association with Oden may be a simple product of a natural confusion between the two types of supernatural hunts. |
Different Places – Different Names
The identity of the leader of the host varies from place to place. Often the horde of spirits is identified with an historical or legendary-historical figure. Gervasius von Tillbury describes King Arthur as the leader of the Wild Hunt (1211). In Lausitz and Orlagau, it is Dietrich von Bern — Theoderic the Great in Germanic legend.
Around the Hessian Odenberg, Charlemagne; in France, Charles the Fifth (folk etymology making ”Charles quint” into “Hellekin,” as in the 14th-century “Exposition de la doctrine chretienne”); in Dartmoor, Sir Francis Drake; in Sealand, King Valdemar; in Jutland, Christian the Second; in Norway, the oskorei is led by Sigurd Svein and Guro Rysserova (“Gudrun Horse-tail“) — the Sigurdhr Fáfnisbani and Gudhrun Gjúkadottir of the Eddic lays. In Middle and Upper Germany, the man who goes before the host was called “der trewe Eckhardt.”
Grimm identifies this figure as Eckhardt, Kriemhild’s chamberer in Nibelungenlied (III, p. 935), and in the Heldenbuch, he is said to sit outside the Venusberg to warn people, much as he does in the accounts of the furious host. By 1534, Eckhart had passed into a proverb.
Odin and the Wild Hunt
Some of the names appear only in Wild Hunt legend, as Ritter Alke of Greifenhagen, Graf von Ebernburg of Zabelsdorf, and Hans von Hackelnberg/Hackelberend of Westphalia. The most common names, however, are derivations from the *wodh- root: in Schwabia, the army is “Wuotes Here” (Zimmerische Chronik); the hunter is “der Wode” in Rügen; the Middle German names “Wutan” and corresponding “wutanes her” have already been mentioned.
Westphalia preserves the name Woenjäger beside the more difficult forms Hodenjäger and Bodenjäger; in the northern half of Jutland, we have Wojensjaeger, Uen, Uensjaeger. In Sweden, we have the Odensjakt, with Oden identified as an ancient king doomed to wander the world in punishment for his sins (in Varend), or as a sharpshooter who hunted on a Sunday.
| The name Wodan or Wod does not appear in Normandy, England, or, surprisingly, Norway. However, Sigurd has undergone a curious change in the Norwegian folklore of the oskorei. While all the German and Norse legends in which Sigurd appear show him as a youthful hero, doomed to an untimely death. In fact, the depiction of this hero on the Hylestad stave-church portals shows him as beardless; if the Sigurd of the Ramsundberget rune stone is bearded at all, his beard is very short, in contrast to the long-bearded smith Reginn in the same carving.
However, M.B. Landstad records that Sigurd Svein is terrifyingly old, and decrepit to the point of blindness, so that when he should see, his eyes need to be opened with a hook. |
Odin
Pic: Gone Fishin’ |
The old man with seeing difficulties is by no means similar to the young hero Sigurdhr Fafnisbani, though the ballad of Sigurd Svein is otherwise relatively faithful to Völsunga Saga: he is, however, remarkably similar to Sigurdhr’s godly patron and forefather, the aged Odinn who also goes by the names Bileygr (“Weak-Eyed“), Herbundi (“Army-Blind“), and Helblindi (“Death-Blind“), leading to the suspicion that Norwegian folk tradition might have replaced the name of the god with that of his hero.
The Female Guide of the Dead
A variant form of the legend is that associated with the female Perchte/Holda/Holle (in Germany) or Frien/Freki/Frik/Freja (Sweden, Northern Germany). Like the masculine figures discussed above, Perchte or Holda leads a train of souls. However, her followers are sometimes young children (Orla-gau); she also steals children. She also acts as an enforcer of female social norms: she punishes women who have not finished their spinning by the appointed night or who spin on the wrong day. She often gives gifts to children, as her masculine equivalents do not.
Freja
Pic: PhotoBucket |
Particularly in Austria and Scandinavia, the Yule-time female figure who can either be the kindly gift-giver or the fearsome demon is St. Lucia, who also is associated with animal-masking. In Austria, she is Spillalutsche, “Spindle-Lucia,” who punishes children and spinners with red-hot bobbins. In Schleswig-Holstein the Holda-figure is shown with a cow skin and horns, and a cow’s head or foot marks Lucy Day on some of the Scandinavian rune-stocks. This bears a certain similarity to the Norwegian image of Guro Rysserova, who appears as a woman in front, but has a horse’s tail. |
The Wild Hunt or Furious Host appears at different times of the year, being frequently seen in spring and fall, but the most common and consistent period for its appearance overall is the Yule season. This fits in neatly with the Germanic tradition as a whole: Yule is the season in which hauntings and supernatural visitation of all sort are the most common.
The hauntings in Eyrbyggja saga take place at Yule, as does the death of Glam in Grettis saga. Folk tales of all the Scandinavian countries have trolls or elves making their appearance at Yule, particularly in Iceland, where a common theme is the supernatural visitor menacing the woman who must stay home to look after the house on Christmas Eve. Christopher Arnold, writing in 1674, mentions
neither good or evil spirits, which are particularly in the air around the holy birth-time of Christ; and are called “Juhlafolker,” that is, “Yule-folk” by (the Laplanders).
This name is suspiciously similar to the Old Norse “joln” for “gods” (in Eyvindr skaldaspillr’s “Haleygjatal“), which both Magnusson (p. 433) and Faulkes (Edda, p. 134) interpret as being derived from jól, “Yule.” The oskorei is also called julereien or juleskreien.
The Living get carried away by the Hunt
| Another theme which is common to the Wild Hunt/ Furious Host legend is that of the human being interacting with the hunt in some way. Involvement with the host of the dead can often be dangerous or fatal. In the Zimmerische Chronik, one man bandages a ghost and becomes ill, another man answers the hunt with the same result. In Pomerania and Westfalia, the Hunt chases travellers to death. M. Landstad cites a Telemark story of the ”Aasgaardsreid“ leaving a dead man hanging where they had drunken the Yule ale. |
Sleipnir at full charge
Pic: Orkneyjar |
The motif of the living person who is picked up by the horde and carried somewhere else is particularly common in Germany and in Norway. A curious form of this theme which is unique to Norway has people undergoing a sort of involuntary separation from their bodies, which lie as if dead while their souls are faring with the oskorei, as Landstad describes:
“She fell backwards and lay the whole night as if she were dead. It was of no profit to shake her, for the Asgardsreid had made off with her.”
The woman then awakes to tell how she had ridden with the host
“so that fire spurted under horse-hooves” (p. 15).
In Pomerania, doors are closed against the Hunter to keep children from being carried off; in Bohuslän, it was said that
“Oden fares from up in the air and takes creatures and children with him.”
A number of the tales of the Wild Hunt describe the punishment of someone who mocks at the hunt, as in Neuvorpommern, where
“A miller’s boy stood before the mill, when the Wild Hunt went over him. ‘Take me with!’ the youth cried. ‘Half part!’ Wode said, and as he came back, cast a human leg before the mill, crying, ‘Häst du wullt jagen / Kannst ok mit gnagen!’ — If you wanted to hunt, you can also eat. The boy tried to get rid of the leg in all possible ways, but nothing worked” (Jahn, Volkssagen aus Pommern und Rugen, pp. 7-8).
Variants of this story are repeated a number of times in Northern Germany.
The Helpers of the Hunt are often rewarded
Those who help the Hunter or members of his train, however, are often rewarded with gifts. In the Strassburger Chronicle’s example of the Freiburg woman who bandaged her dead husband, the woman was given
“a great golden head, from which she should drink … the woman held the head in her hand, and nothing happened to her. It was found afterwards, that the golden head was good, and had been no betrayal. The devil had certainly stolen it somewhere.”
Those who hold the hounds of the Danish Wolmar are given apparently worthless trifles which later turn into gold. In the North German stories, similarly, the foam which a hound-holder wipes from the Hunter’s horse turns into gold pieces (Jahn, p. 12), and a man of Boeck who fixed Frau Gauden’s carriage wheels was given the dung of her hounds, which afterwards became gold (Grimm, III, p. 926). A combination of both themes appears in another North German tale in Jahn’s collection, where the man who calls to the Hunt is given a horse-leg with the words,
“There have you also something for your hunting,”
but the next day the horse-leg has become gold (p. 30).
Odin’s Hunt in Sweden
Pic: Wiki |
While it takes a foolhardy person to interfere with the Hunt, only the courageous survive when the Hunt accosts them. In “Local Traditions of the Quantocks” (Folklore XIX, 1908, p. 42), C.W. Whistler reports that a man
“dared to cross the path in the dark, and was overtaken by the Wild Hunt as it passed overhead. And when he looked up, there was the devil himself following the hounds and riding on a great pig. What was worse, the devil pulled up and spoke to him. ‘Good fellow,’ he called, ‘how ambles my sow?’ The man was most terrible feared, but he knew that he must make some answer, so he replied, ‘Eh, by the Lord, her ambles well enough!’ And that saved him, for the devil could not abide the name of the Lord, so that he and his dogs vanished in a flash of fire!”
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Another well-known Mecklenburg legend has Wod engaging in a tug-o-war with a peasant whom he meets on the way, but the man is clever enough to tie the chain to an oak, so that Wod cannot pull him up into the air.
“‘Well pulled!’ said the hunter, ‘many’s the man I’ve made mine, you are the first that ever held out against me, you shall have your reward.’” The peasant is then given some blood and a hindquarter from Wod’s stag, which have turned into gold and silver by the time he has reached his cottage.
The Hunt as Natural Phenomena
| While these tales show the Hunt as Märchen, attempts have also been made to interpret the legends as based on natural phenomena. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the Wild Hunt/Furious Host was often compared to the stormwinds of winter. A more plausible explanation was offered by the Danish scholar H. F. Feilberg: in “Hvorledes Opstar Sagn i Vore Dage” he describes how, one evening near Odense, he heard a great rustling and hound-barking in the air over his head, and how he thought at once of the Odinsjaeger, but |
Wild Geese
Pic: Beardy Git |
“Next day I asked the teacher of natural history at Latin school which migratory birds it was that I had heard.”
Hylten-Cavallius cites the Wärend expressions,
“that is Oden’s hunt, those are Oden’s hounds that can be heard in the air”
for the passing of the wild geese, and in eastern Hinterpommern, the Wild Hunt comes in the spring and fall, when the migratory birds come and go. It cannot be denied that the eerie barking voices and rustling of a flock of geese passing overhead is very likely to have contributed to the longevity of the belief in the Wild Hunt; however, it does not explain the legend. Wild geese, after all, do not visit the northern countries around Yuletime, when the Wild Hunt most often rides.
Further, Iceland is a favorite stopping place of many sorts of migratory birds: if the legends of the Wild Hunt were heavily based on flocks of geese, one might have expected them to have survived better there than anywhere else. However, Iceland lacks hound-and-horse hunting, and also lacks the sort of social stratification which may have contributed strongly to the development of the Furious Host into the Wild Hunt elsewhere.
The Wild Hunt as Ancient Folk Ritual
Otto Höfler, in his Verwandlungskulte, Volkssagen, und Mythen, has strongly put forth the idea that many of the medieval records of the Wild Hunt/Furious Host were actually descriptions of a ritual folk-procession. The fact that the host appears by both day and night, coming into the city streets as well as terrifying lonely travellers in the dark wood, may support this theory, as does Vulpius’ 16th-century description of the Nürnberg Fastnacht train as
“the wild host, very strange figures, horned, beaked, tailed … roaring and shouting … behind, on a black, wild steed, Frau Holda, the Wild Huntress, blowing into the hunting horn, swinging the cracking whip, her head-hair shaking about wildly like a true wonder-outrage.”
Vulpius also calls this procession “das wuthende Heer” (Meissen, p. 124). Similar living trains appear in the Tirol, such as the Perchtenlauf described by J.V. v. Zingerle in 1857:
The Perchten
Pic: The Race |
The Perchtenlauf was earlier usual on the last Fasching-evening. It was a kind of masked procession. The masked ones were called Perchten. They were divided into beautiful and ugly…. The beautiful Perchten often distributed gifts. So went it loudly and joyfully, if the wild Perchte herself did not come among them.
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If this spirit mixed among them, the game was dangerous. One could recognize the presence of the wild Perchte when the Perchten raged all wild and furious and sprang over the well-stock. In this case the Perchten ran swiftly away from each other in fear and tried to reach the nearest, best house. For as soon as one was under a roof, the Wild One could not have them any longer. Otherwise she would tear apart anyone, who she could get possession of. Even today, one can see places where the Perchten torn apart by the wild Perchten lie buried.
This idea of a Yule/masking game becoming terrifyingly real also appears in a Danish folk-tale, where a young woman dances with the Yule-buck, which then comes to life as the Devil himself and batters her to death against the barn walls. Christine N.F. Eike, in her article
“Oskoreia og ekstaseriter” extends Höfler’s investigation to the Norwegian materials, concluding that there may well be an original relationship between the living bands of young men that travel about during the Yule season riding horses, drinking beer, and so forth, and the tales about the bands of the dead who do the same.
The Consistency of the Legends
Overall, the legends of the “Furious Host” or “Wild Hunt” seem to have maintained a remarkable degree of consistency through their wide range of time and space a consistency which can, perhaps, be best explained by the essential reality of the underlying belief to those who held it, from the heathen period through the time of our own grandparents. So when you go out into the night this wintertime, listen carefully for the barking of dogs and the cry “Midden in dem Weg!” Do not mock at the horde that sweeps past, but be ready to carry home whatever Woden or Holda should give you, for the lowliest of gifts from the Hunt’s leader may be found to turn to true gold like the very folk-stories themselves, whose quaint dialects and humble words cloak the gold of our forebears’ souls.
Book-Hoard
Brunk, August. “Der wilde Jager im Glauben des pommerschen Volkes”, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde XIII, 1903, pp. 179-192.
Celander, Hilding. “Oskoreien ok besläkade forestall-ningar I äldre och nyare nordisk tradition”, Saga och sed 1942, pp. 71-175.
Elke, Christine N.F. “Oskoreia og ekstaseriter”, Norveg 23, 1980, pp. 277-309
Feilberg, H.F. “Hvorledes opstar Sagn I vore Dagar?”, Dania II, 1892-4, pp. 81-126. Feilberg, H.F. Jul (2nd ed, 2 vols).
This article copyright 1992 by Kveldulf Hagen Gundarsson.
Web version copyright 1997 by Kveldulf Hagen Gundarsson and Mountain Thunder.
Source
Go for Celtic Mythology, kids! The ancient heroes of the Celts were related to places on the land as well as the sea- so all requirements would be satisfied. The question I would ask is: Who rode across the sea in a chariot of sea-foam?
