Wild Hunt
Comparative evidence and terminology
Germanic tradition
Based on the comparative study of the German folklore, the phenomenon is often referred to as Wilde Jagd or Wütendes Heer. The term 'Hunt' was more common in northern Germany and 'Host' was more used in Southern Germany; with however no clear dividing line since parts of southern Germany know the 'Hunt', and parts of the north know the 'Host'. It was also known in Germany as the Wildes Heer, its leader was given various identities, including Wodan, Knecht Ruprecht, Berchtold, and Holda. The Wild Hunt is also known from post-medieval folklore.In England, it was known as Herlaþing, Woden's Hunt, Herod's Hunt, Cain's Hunt, the Devil's Dandy Dogs, Gabriel's Hounds, and Ghost Riders.
In Scandinavia, the Wild Hunt is known as Oskoreia, and as Oensjægeren. The names Åsgårdsrei, Odens jakt and Vilda jakten are also attested. At the very front of Oskoreia rides Guro Rysserova, often called Guro Åsgard, who is "big and horrid, her horse black and called Skokse "
There is disagreement about the etymology of the word oskorei. The first element has several proposed sources: Åsgård, oska, or Old Norse ǫskurligr. The hypothetical Ásgoðreið was also once proposed. Only the second element, rei from Old Norse reið, is uncontroversial. The word was popularly perceived to be connected to Asgard, as seen in the folk ballad of Sigurd Svein, who is taken to Asgard by Oskoreia and Guro Rysserova.
In the Netherlands and Flanders, the Wild Hunt is known as the Buckriders and was used by gangs of highwaymen for their advantage in the 18th century.
Europe
In Welsh folklore, Gwyn ap Nudd was depicted as a wild huntsman riding a demon horse who hunts souls at night along with a pack of white-bodied and red-eared "dogs of hell". In Arthurian legends, he is the king of the underworld who makes sure that the imprisoned devils do not destroy human souls. A comparable Welsh folk myth is known as Cŵn Annwn.In France, the "Host" was known in Latin sources as Familia Hellequini and in Old French as Maisnie Hellequin. The Old French name Hellequin was probably borrowed from Middle English Herla by the Romance-speaking Norman invaders of Britain. Other similar figures appear in the French folklore, such as Le Grand-Veneur, a hunter who chased with dogs in the forest of Fontainebleau, and a Poitou tradition where a hunter who has faulted by hunting on Sunday is condemned to redeem himself by hunting during the night, along with its French Canadian version the Chasse-galerie.
Among West Slavs, it is known as divoký hon or štvaní, dzëwô/dzëkô jachta, Dziki Gon or Dziki Łów. It is also known among the Sorbs and among the South Slavic Slovenes Divja Jaga. However, scholars of Slavic folklore have noted it is a motif of foreign, specifically German, origin. In Belarusian, it is called Дзiкае Паляванне. As Belarus used to be part of Poland, the motif's presence likely came from there as an intermediary.
In Italy, it is called Caccia Morta, Caccia infernale or Caccia selvaggia
In Spain this myth is documented at least since the 13th century, under the name hueste antigua, today estantigua. In Galician is known as Estantiga, Compaña and Santa Compaña ; Güestia in Asturias; Hueste de Ánimas in León; and Hueste de Guerra or Cortejo de Gente de Muerte in Extremadura.
Historiography
The concept of the Wild Hunt was first documented by the German folklorist Jacob Grimm who first published it in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie. It was in this work that he popularized the term Wilde Jagd for the phenomenon. Grimm's methodological approach was rooted in the idea, common in nineteenth-century Europe, that modern folklore represented a fossilized survival of the beliefs of the distant past. In developing his idea of the Wild Hunt, he mixed together recent folkloric sources with textual evidence dating to the medieval and early modern periods. This approach came to be criticized within the field of folkloristics during the 20th century as more emphasis was placed on the "dynamic and evolving nature of folklore".Grimm interpreted the Wild Hunt phenomenon as having pre-Christian origins, arguing that the male figure who appeared in it was a survival of folk beliefs about the god Wodan who had "lost his sociable character, his near familiar features, and assumed the aspect of a dark and dreadful power... a specter and a devil." Grimm believed that this male figure was sometimes replaced by a female counterpart, whom he referred to as Holda and Berchta. In his words, "not only Wuotan and other gods, but heathen goddesses too, may head the furious host: the wild hunter passes into the wood-wife, Wôden into Frau Gaude." He added his opinion that this female figure was Woden's wife.
Discussing martial elements of the Wild Hunt, Grimm commented that "it marches as an army, it portends the outbreak of war." He added that a number of figures that had been recorded as leading the hunt, such as "Wuotan, Huckelbernd, Berholt, bestriding their white war-horse, armed and spurred, appear still as supreme directors of the war for which they, so to speak, give license to mankind."
Grimm believed that in pre-Christian Europe, the hunt, led by a god and a goddess, either visited "the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people" or they alternately float "unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes: an array which, less tied down to a definite time, explains more the natural phenomenon." He believed that under the influence of Christianisation, the story was converted from being that of a "solemn march of gods" to being "a pack of horrid spectres, dashed with dark and devilish ingredients". A little earlier, in 1823, Felicia Hemans records this legend in her poem The Wild Huntsman, linking it here specifically to the castles of Rodenstein and Schnellerts and to the Odenwald.
In the influential book Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen, Otto Höfler argued that the German motifs of the "Wild Hunt" should be interpreted as the spectral troops led by the god Wuotan which had a ritualistic counterpart in the living bands of ecstatic warriors, allegedly in a cultic union with the dead warriors of the past.
Hans Peter Duerr noted that for modern readers, it "is generally difficult to decide, on the basis of the sources, whether what is involved in the reports about the appearance of the Wild Hunt is merely a demonic interpretation of natural phenomenon, or whether we are dealing with a description of ritual processions of humans changed into demons." Historian Ronald Hutton noted that there was "a powerful and well-established international scholarly tradition" which argued that the medieval Wild Hunt legends were an influence on the development of the early modern ideas of the Witches' Sabbath. Hutton nevertheless believed that this approach could be "fundamentally challenged".
Lotte Motz noted that the motif is found "above all in areas of Germanic speech." While found in areas once settled by Celts, these legends are told less frequently and they are not encountered in the Mediterranean regions, "at least not easily".
Attestations
Germany
An abundance of different tales of the Wild Hunt has been recorded in Germany. The leader, often called der Schimmelreiter, is generally identified with the god Wotan, but sometimes with a feminine figure: the wife of Wotan, Holda, Fru Waur, or Fru Gode in Northern Germany; or Perchta in Southern Germany. The leader also is sometimes an undead noble, most often called Count Hackelberg or Count Ebernburg, who is cursed to hunt eternally because of misbehaviour during his lifetime, and in some versions died from injuries of a slain boar's tusk.Dogs and wolves were generally involved. In some areas, werewolves were depicted as stealing beer and sometimes food in houses. Horses were portrayed as two-, three-, six-, and eight-legged, often with fiery eyes. In the 'Host' variants, principally found in southern Germany, a man went out in front, warning people to get out of the streets before the coming of the Host's armed men, who were sometimes depicted as doing battle with one another. A feature peculiar to the 'Hunt' version, generally encountered in northern Germany, was the pursuit and capture of one or more female demons, or a hart in some versions, while some others did not have prey at all.
Sometimes, the tales associate the hunter with a dragon or the devil. The lone hunter is most often riding a horse, seldom a horse-drawn carriage, and usually has several hounds in his company. If the prey is mentioned, it is most often a young woman, either guilty or innocent. Gottfried August Bürger's ballad Der wilde Jäger describes the fate of a nobleman who dares to hunt on the Sabbath and finds both a curse and a pack of demons deep in the woods. He might also have asked God to let him hunt until Judgement Day, as has ewiger Jäger.
The majority of the tales deal with some person encountering the Wild Hunt. If this person stands up against the hunters, he will be punished. If he helps the hunt, he will be awarded money, gold, or, most often, a leg of a slain animal or human, which is often cursed in a way that makes it impossible to be rid of it. In this case, the person has to find a priest or magician able to ban it or trick the Wild Hunt into taking the leg back by asking for salt, which the hunt can not deliver. In many versions, a person staying right in the middle of the road during the encounter is safe. The person might also be warned by Treuer Eckart going ahead of the wild hunt and warning of its approach.