To commemorate Grimfrost's 10th anniversary, this is the sixth in the series of blog posts by acknowledged academics about their chosen Viking Age subject.
About the Author
Anders Kaliff (b. 1963) has been active as an archaeologist since the mid-1980s and is a professor of archeology at Uppsala University since 2008. He is currently active within The research program Language and Myths of Prehistory (LAMP), an interdisciplinary, international project running from 2020-2025, funded by the Riksbanken Jubileumsfond. The research program focuses on the language, culture and myths of the early Indo-Europeans.
Werewolves and Indo-European warrior-bands
Werewolves are common creatures in European folklore, not least in Scandinavia. Although the historic version of these mythical beings developed in a Christian context, the belief in werewolves goes far back in time. In terms of werewolf myths, as evident in the Old Norse material, Scandinavia has one of the richest traditions in Europe, possible to trace back to a common Indo-European mythology. In this, lycanthropy – the mythical transformation of a person into a wolf – is an aspect of the initiation into a warrior class, its members believed to transform into wolves upon their initiation. Even if traditions about werewolves are present in most European regions and many other parts of the world, Scandinavian legends have remained particularly strong. A fascinating perspective is that the werewolves of folklore may actually have a real background. To find the explanation for that, we have to go way back in time, to the time when people speaking Indo-European languages first came to dominate Europe.
Simplified and schematic map of early Indo-European cultures and migrations
What is Indo-European?
So what do we mean by Indo-European? At its core, it is a linguistic concept, referring to the language group that includes the majority of European languages, as well as several Asian ones. However, since the 19th century, the term has also come to refer to commonalities in culture and religion among the speakers of these languages, but also the physical people themselves. Ever since the subject was first discussed by scientists more than 200 years ago, it has been disputed whether Indo-European language and culture spread between peoples or through migrations. Breakthroughs in ancient DNA research in recent decades may now have provided a clear answer to this question for the first time.
A revolutionary discovery was announced in 2015, when two independent genetic studies were published simultaneously in the prestigious journal Nature, both of which established a widespread and rapid migration from the steppes north of the Black and Caspian seas beginning about 5,000 years ago. The migration went westwards to Europe but also eastwards, and onwards to the Indian peninsula and Iran. These DNA analyzes – now followed by many confirmatory and in-depth studies – indicated a widespread migration, starting at a time and from a place consistent with what linguists had long predicted for the spread of Indo-European languages, and also with the picture maintained by some archaeologists. Within archaeology, however, there has generally been, for a long time, a strong skepticism towards interpreting migration as the explanation for the spread of culture, something that aDNA research has now quickly changed.
The genetics show an extensive migration, in which, at least initially, almost exclusively men were involved. These in turn had children with local women, so successfully that the male lineages in today's Europe are largely traced back to these migrant men from the steppes. This is evidenced by the DNA of the male Y chromosome, which is preserved unchanged from father to son over millennia. Mothers were more localised and came from nearby farming communities. In some cases, the newcomers may have ‘peacefully "married into" local families, but unfortunately much points to a more violent background, not least the total lack of male hereditary lines from pre-Indo-European times. It indicates a conquest, where certain Indo-European men gained a dominant position.
There are certainly alternative theories for the rapid dominance of Indo-Europeans. The Yersina pestis bacteria – the classic plague – spread to Europe through this early Indo-European expansion, possibly wreaking havoc in local population, not earlier exposed to it. Some areas, as the British Isles, saw a dramatic decrease of the older Neolithic population during the second half of the 2000s BC, when the gene pool was replaced by DNA from the steppe. This could indicate a devastating epidemic to which the arriving steppe peoples may have already been immune, a similar scenario as when Europeans arrived in America four millennia later. Still, war-like events are not to be neglected, and combination of causes is a likely scenario. War and epidemics may have worked together in a devastating way for the previous population. In any event, the Indo-Europeans seems to have brought new forms of violence, as part of a masculine ideology, focused on warfare, and increased hierarchization of society. Bands of young, fierce warriors are likely to have been a crucial part of this, as a significant feature in Indo-European cultures.
Werewolf devouring a woman.
The Kóryos
We have a reconstructed proto-Indo-European for this, *kóryos, approximately meaning ‘war band’ or ‘unit of warriors’. In such warrior bands, unmarried young males served for a period of time, before integrating back into their host society, a rite of passage allowing youngsters to enter manhood. One prominent feature was an initiation ritual that crucially involved being sent to live outside society and its norms, another that the young warriors identified themselves with specific animals, particularly wolves and dogs. Initiation rites of this kind, in which boys lived in the wild, acting like wolves and dogs, are described in texts from several ancient societies; Greek, Latin, Germanic, Celtic, Iranian, and Vedic, all with the common denominator that they originated from a shared proto-Indo-European context. In Latin they were known as the luperci or suodales, with equivalents in the form of the kouros or ephebes in Greek, but also the fian in Celtic, vrātyas or maruts in Vedic and Jungmannschaft or Männerbünde in Germanic. This last term is perhaps the most familiar, but also most infamous for its close association with the ideology and glorification of Indo-European – so called Aryan – heritage in Germany of the Third Reich. Aryan was originally the name of the ancient Indo-Europeans who came to northern India, which in the first decades of the 20th century was generally used as a synonym for Indo-Europeans in general. However, it is important to keep in mind that the political use and abuse of the term has little to do with the real Indo-Europeans, more than 3000 years earlier.
The kóryos were composed of adolescent males, presumably aged from 8-12 to 18-19 years old and initiated together into manhood as an age-class cohort. During the time they spent in these groups, the boys and young men were allowed to behave in ways that were completely unacceptable in normal society; stealing, raiding and sexually assaulting women. All this was tolerated and even encouraged among members of these warrior bands, as long as the destructive and malevolent acts were not directed at one’s own society. Thus, warrior bands of this kind may have played a decisive role in the early Indo-European expansion, as clearly indicated for the Vedic expansion into the Indian Peninsula during the second millennium BC. The Rig Veda and other almost contemporary sources show that these events took on a warlike character. Similar mechanisms are likely to have characterised the Indo-European expansion in other geographical areas as well, not least those that reached Europe and laid the foundations for the development of European Bronze Age society. Surviving traditions from different parts of Europe have overall similarities, showing how groups of adolescent boys were allowed to spend a few years in special groups, behaving like dogs or wolves.
A Greek warrior wearing a wolf-skin.
Comparative mythology
Comparative mythology offers some insight into the initiation ceremonies of warrior bands, and we may retrieve some fragments of knowledge from the classical world. In ancient Sparta, young men sacrificed dogs to the god of war, and also in Rome a dog sacrifice was part of a complex ritual that constituted a boy’s initiation ceremony. Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC that the Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of Scythia, were all transformed into wolves once a year for several days, and then changed back to their human shape, a theme repeated also in other ancient texts. In his Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC - 17/18 AD) gives us the story of King Lycaon of Arcadia, who Zeus transformed into a wolf as a punishment, a story also told by the Greek geographer Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. This myth provides the root for the term lycanthropy - a human transforming into an animal, a werewolf. Following Pausanias, the transformation of Lycaon was not a one-off event and men have been transformed into wolves during sacrifices to Zeus. In the first century AD, Pliny the Elder also wrote about an annual ritual in Arcadia, in which a man would be transformed into a wolf and forced to join a pack for nine years. If he refused to taste human flesh during this time, he could then recover his human form. This myth has been interpreted as a reminiscence of an original rite of passage for Arcadian youth.
In the Vedic tradition, young boys began their initiation already at the age of eight, first studying heroic poetry and practicing hunting and fighting skills. At 16, they were initiated into a warrior band during the winter solstice ritual, ritually dying before being reborn as dogs of war. After a dice game had determined their leader, the initiated were cast away in the wild for four years to live as dogs or wolves, stealing animals, women, goods and territory. At the end of the four-year initiation, a final sacrifice was performed to transform the dog-warrior into a responsible adult man, after which the fully initiated males destroyed their old clothes to become human once again, ready to return to their family and to live by the rules of their community.
King Lycaon of Arcadia is transformed into a wolf.
Archaeological evidence
Direct archaeological evidence for early groups of Indo-European warriors and the rituals associated with them is sparse but does exist. The most prominent early finds originate from the Krasnosamarskoe site in the Pontic steppe region southeast of the Russian city of Samara. The site is associated with the so called Srubnaya culture (1900-1700 BC) and was explored by US archaeologists David W. Anthony and Dorcas R. Brown, both well known in the research field of early Indo-European culture. In addition to the fact that the site provides a lot of tangible evidence for rites that strongly resemble the data from comparative Indo-European mythology, it originates from a time and place that is central to the early spread of Indo-European culture and language. The site held the remains of at least 64 butchered dogs and wolves, with the bones cut in unusual ways, not resembling ordinary butchering practices. The animals were filleted and chopped into 1- to 3-inch pieces, following a standardised and apparently strictly ritual pattern. In particular, the heads of the dogs were skilfully cut up with an axe. Snouts were divided into three pieces and the remainder of the skulls were broken down into geometrically shaped fragments. There is a clear seasonal connection since the canids were mainly killed in winter. Over 70 per cent of the dogs subjected to DNA analysis proved to be male, which may indicate a male initiation rite. Anthony and Brown’s interpretation of Krasnosamarskoe is that it was a place where Srubnaya boys went to symbolically become and live as dogs and wolfs for a certain period before being reintegrated into society as adult men.
Nordic warriors, one of them wearing a wolf skin.
Nordic wolf-warriors
During the European Iron Age, the bands of young warriors seem to have been gradually incorporated into armed forces of increasingly powerful chiefs and kings. In this context, we may understand the Old Norse Úlfhednar and Berserkir, fierce warriors dressed in wolfskin and bear skin respectively (alternative interpretations of the latter occur). In the Sagas, these were particularly feared warriors, bound by special ties and characteristics. Harald Fairhair is known to have had a body of Úlfhednar, as mentioned in the Vatnsdoela Saga, Haraldskvæði, and the Vǫlsunga Saga. These warriors were resistant to pain and killed viciously in battle, much like wild animals. They are believed to be especially reflected in archaeological material from the Iron Age and Vendel period in Scandinavia that feature depictions of animal warriors. The Berserkir were famously known for attacking in a rage, interestingly described as somewhat ominous and negative. Their uncontrolled way of fighting fell outside normal rules and behaviours, and there is a clear connection to shape-shifting. When rage seizes the warrior, he does not become an animal as such but rather start behaving like one. Thus, there is a striking resemblance between how the Berserkir is described and how one may understand the kóryos in its early Indo-European version, as special bands of warriors, following their own rules in ways that often contravened all socially accepted behaviour.
It was also believed that certain powerful animal characteristics could be linked to special individuals in Germanic societies, expressed through their names. Ulf, Wolf or Wulf are common Germanic names and also forms a central component in others: Wolfgang, Adolf (Athalwolf), Rudolf (Hroðulf), Ulfbjörn, etc. This reflects a close connection between personality and animals – in this case the wolf – and specific men in Germanic societies.
Úlfhednar and Berserkir, were also closely associated with the Norse god Odin. From an early medieval and Christian perspective, such transformations of ‘men into wolves’ in pagan cults were associated with the devil. This concurs with the equally widespread identification between the god Odin and the evil one – the devil – so common in later Christian tradition. Also the Old Norse werewolf motif in some Sagas is explicitly interwoven with lawlessness, shape-shifting and combat, for instance the Vǫlsunga Saga, a story that features both shapeshifters and Úlfhednar. It is a fornaldarsaga, a type of Old Norse saga set in a distant past, assumed to go back to the Migration period in the 5th century AD. The family name of the Völsungr (also Ylfings or Wulfings) who are central to this Saga means ‘wolf descendants’ or ‘wolf clan’. This family of ‘wolf descendants’ is said to be directly related to the god Odin who offers them special protection. It is of importance that the wolf as such is closely associated with Odin, a recurring theme in Old Norse tradition, well in line with the special bands of ‘animal warriors’ closely allied with this particular god.
The werewolves’ connection to the winter solstice and Christmas is strong in later Scandinavian folklore tradition, the time of year when the initiation of young men into warrior-bands usually took place judging by older Indo-European examples. This also fit with other legends and beliefs associated with the time around Christmas, especially the stories about the Wild Hunt – also known as ‘Odens hunt’ – a ghostly entourage in which dogs, wolves and sometimes even werewolves appear. In his famous History of the Nordic peoples (Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus) published in 1555, Olaus Magnus (book XVIII, ch. 45-47) states that werewolves really existed. He contends that these werewolves are fiercest during the darkest period of the year, Christmas time. He claims werewolf attacks are much worse than those of ordinary wolves and describes how they break down front doors and attack people in their homes at Christmas. Although it is difficult to prove with absolute certainty, there are countless indications that the ancient belief in and fear of werewolves, to a large extent, contains reminiscences of the warrior bands - kóryos - which seem to have been such a crucial part of Proto-Indo-European culture.
The Wild Hunt, led by Odin on horseback
Suggestions for in-depth reading:
Anthony, D.W. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press. Princeton.
Kaliff, A. & Oestigaard, T. 2022. Werewolves, Warriors and Winter Sacrifices. Unmasking Kivik and Indo-European Cosmology in Bronze Age Scandinavia. OPIA 75. Uppsala. (Also freely available online in full text): https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1595266/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Kershaw, K. 2000. The One-eyes God. Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Männerbünde. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph No. 36. Washington C.C.
McCone, K. R.. 1987. Hund, Wolf, und Krieger bei den Indogermanen. In Meid, W. (ed.). Studien zum indogermanischen Wortschatz: 101-154. Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. Innsbruck.
About the images:
Featured image and fig. 5) : Nordic warriors, one of them wearing a wolf skin, on one of the famous Torslunda plates from the 6th or 7th century, found on the Island of Öland. Now in the National Historical Museums of Sweden collections. Public Domain.
Picture of the author: Photo by author
Fig. 1) Simplified and schematic map of early Indo-European cultures and migrations, based on recent archaeogenetic results. Ill. by Terje Oestigaard & Anders Kaliff 2023 (background map by Visible Earth, NASA).
Fig.2) Werewolf devouring a woman. Mid 18th century engraving, in Mansell Collection, London..Public Domain.
Fig. 3) A Greek warrior wearing a wolf-skin. Attic red-figure vase, 5th century BC, now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Public Domain.
Fig. 4) King Lycaon of Arcadia is transformed into a wolf. Engraving by Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617), published 1589. Public Domain.
Fig. 6) The Wild Hunt, led by Odin on horseback. The painting "Die Wilde Jagd" from 1889 by Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), now in the Lenbachhaus art museum, Munich. Public Domain.
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