Category: Úlfhéðnar

Werewolves, Warriors and Winter Sacrifices

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Unmasking Kivik and Indo-European Cosmology in Bronze Age Scandinavia

Anders Kaliff and Terje Østigård

“Pastoralism and warrior bands were essential parts of ecology and cosmology; novices were initiated into these brotherhoods as ‘werewolves’. By putting on masks or cloaks, they became ancestors and played a key role in a series of winter sacrifices linked to the agricultural cycle.

“The werewolf myth contains remnants of all lifecycle rituals – from birth to initiation as warriors, marriage, death and becoming an ancestor. Ethnographically, the cultural and cosmological instituion manifested in Kivik can be identified through parts of Europe up to modern times.”

Full 256 page PDF here:
https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1595266/FULLTEXT01.pdf

The Beast Within…

Two hours of werewolf stories and lore!

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I’m teaming up again with storyteller Jason Buck on Dec 11th for two hours of Werewolf stories and lore. Tickets on sale now!

https://tinyurl.com/TheWolfWithin

Ancient Ritual Roles of Wolves

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“In Old Hittite tradition, the wolf plays a special role, functioning as the em- bodiment of sacral qualities. In particular, wolves and wolf packs serve as an image of unity and omniscience. Thus King Hattusilis I (who reigned in the seventeenth century B.C.), addressing his council, urges his warrior subjects to unite ‘like a wolf pack’: ú-e-it-na-aš ma-a-an pa-an-gur. Dressing in wolf skins (cf. Hitt. LÚmeš UR.BAR.RA ‘wolf people’, i.e. people dressed in wolf skins, KBo XVI 68 I 13; 78 IV 9 et al.) conveys magical power, evidently conferring omniscience on the wearer, and may have been symbolic of a special juridical status. The formula for people turning into wolves, attested in zik-wa UR.BAR.RA-aš kištat ‘you have turned into a wolf’ of the Hittite Laws (§37), resembles Sanskrit vrko hí sáh ‘he is a wolf’, referring to a special juridical status in the wedding ritual of kidnapping the bride (Watkins 1970a).

Hittite wolf's head made of gold, from the Adana Archaeology Museum

“Parallels to these Hittite formulas and rituals can be found in a number of other early Indo-European traditions, which testifies to their Proto-Indo-European character and reconstructibility. In ancient Greek tradition, a person ‘becomes a wolf’ (lúkōi genésthai, Plato: Republic) in connection with a special ritual form of killing. This corresponds exactly to a Germanic formula: in an Old Icelandic peacemaking oath a murderer ‘shall be called a wolf’ (skal svá víða vargr heita): Ivanov 1975.”

Excerpted from “Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A reconstruction and historical analysis of a proto-language and a proto-culture.” by T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov – Trans. J. Nichols. Published by Mouton de Gruyter.

#Hittite #KingHattusilis #Sanskrit #wolfskin #Wolf #Werewolf #Icelandic #oldicelandic #Varg #vargr #indoeuropean #protoindoeuropean #gamkrelidze #Ivanov #anatolia #linguistics

Battle Trance & War Magic

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Going Berserk: Battle Trance and Ecstatic Holy Warriors in the European War Magic Tradition

Woodcut of the image on the Vendel era helmet plate found on Öland, Sweden, depicting a weapon dancer followed by a berserker

“Largely ignored in transpersonal studies to date, dark magic involves socially-transgressive processes called becoming-intense and becoming-animal that produce non-ordinary states useful in the arts, hunting, sex, and fighting.

“War magic, a form of dark magic that involves powers of destruction and invulnerability, is ubiquitous and universal, and one of its primary features is the production of helpful, nonordinary states in combat. Berserkergang (going berserk) is one such state, the latest documented in a long history of Indo-European ecstatic warrior cults. Berserkergang was the battle-trance of the elite consecrated warrior-shamans of Odin, god of magic, poetry, battle, and death. Distinguishing features of berserkergang include invulnerability to fire and bladed weapons, shapeshifting, superhuman strength, laughing at death, and transpersonal identification with comrades and Odin.

“Cross-cultural interpretations have tended to denigrate berserkergang, including modern arguments that attribute it to intoxication, genetic flaws, or pathology. Not only are such arguments inadequate to account for the data, but also the features of berserkergang are considered signs of spiritual attainment in various traditions up to the present day, and the techniques for achieving berserkergang remain in use in many spiritual traditions as well as on the battlefield.

Full paper by Jenny Wade

https://tinyurl.com/y8dcsyaj

Love and Death in the Männerbund

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An essay with Special Reference to the Bjarkamál and The Battle of Maldon

By Joseph Harris

“The ideal of men dying with their lord in the nearly contemporary poems Bjarkamal and The Battle of Maldon has for some time constituted a scholarly problem, though it is not thoughts of death among warriors that seem to need an explanation; rather it is the special form those thoughts take and the historical relationships implied. The interpretive hurdle seems less formidable, however, when this “ ideal” is not isolated, for the institutional context links death with other expressions of love and solidarity.

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“The institution in question is traditionally identified as the comitatus, whether in first-century Germania or thirteenth-century Norway, but the continuity and distinctiveness of the institution are now in serious doubt. Yet all that was formerly identified as belonging to the comitatus can still be ascribed with confidence to all-male groups with aggression as one major function, and these, in turn, can be located under the umbrella of the concept Mannerbund in the extended sense in which the word is currently used. There is no doubt that the problematic ideas about warrior self-sacrifice were in the air in the hypertrophy of heroic ethos of the late Viking Age, but this essay, casting its net very broadly, will propose the importance of a timeless psychological context in terms of male associations.”

Full paper here:-

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https://tinyurl.com/y96aenfe

Old Norse and Irish Shapeshifters

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Metamorphoses: a Comparative Study of Representations of Shape- Shifting in Old Norse and Medieval Irish Narrative Literature

A fascinating overview of shape shifting in Old Norse and medieval Irish literature by Camilla Michelle With Pedersen.

Full paper here:

https://tinyurl.com/ybykbqf7

Berserk for berserkir

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Introducing Combat Trauma to the Compendium of Theories on the Norse Berserker

In her thesis Lily Geraty, adds a new perspective to the concept of the Norse Berserker.

Previous assessments of these semi-legendary warriors have included everything from drug induced ecstatic fury, a survival of the ancient Indo-European männerbunde warrior bands or simply an exaggerated concept of the Jarls Champion.

Geraty suggests that the Berserker may have been suffering from, what we describe now as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Certainly there was endemic warfare at the point in history where Berserkers feature most prominently. Geraty uses analyses from “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character” by Jonathan Shay to reflect on the saga sources.

This thesis attempts to provide a brief overview of major pieces of the English-language scholarship concerning the Norse berserker. It tries to demonstrate consistent flaws in scholarly treatment and the hollow nature of many major theories and attitudes. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate the importance of brining in outside scholarship on the berserker, specifically the work of Jonathan Shay, who’s book Achilles in Vietnam, demonstrated a strong continuity of experience between Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, and the experiences of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. I believe his work can be equally applied to the Norse berserker, and hope to introduce Shay into the conversation.

Full paper here

https://tinyurl.com/y9ot6jy3