[gothic-l] Wolfs/dogs

[Bertil Haggman]

Of course de Vries, _Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte_
(1970) is always a good source.

In fine art of later ages see the two paintings of
D.Hardy from circa 1900 (Odin and Fenris plus The
Binding for Fenris).

The subject of the wolves at Surturbrand devouring the
sun and the moon comes to mind. Moon-eater (Managarmr)
from the Iron-wood and Snorri says he identical with Fenrir. Other
names for these two are Skoll and Hati respectively.

Then there is Gifr and Geri, guardians of the boundary
between this world and another, who will keep watch
day and night until the end of the world. One who passes
(in the Elder Edda) could give them the wings of mythical
bird Vidofnir, and slip past while they were eating. Odin had
a pack of otherworldly hounds, and the Valkyries ride
through the sky over battlefields on wolves.

For more in Indo-European tradition see B. Lincoln,
"The Hellhound", JIES 7, pp. 273-286.

Wolf in Gothic is Wulfs, I presume. Looking for
anything in Gothic myth?

Turning to werewolf there is M.R. Gerstein's "Germanic
warg: the outlaw as werewolf" in _Myth in Indo-
European Antiquity_, Los Angeles 1974.

Finally we may move to jaerul in the discussion of the
Erulic homeland. Elgqvist suggested that one could
connect the Eruli name with the dialect word
jaerul, jaeril, in the South Scandinavian districts
of Vaerend and Blekinge. It means 'hardy fellow or warrior',
but may also be synonym for vaerul, 'were-wolf'. It is as a
matter of fact a coincidence that the word appears in
just that part of Scandinavia which could well be a strong
candidate as home of the Eruli. In Scandinavian were-wolf
is 'varulv'.

Erulically

Bertil

> About the Goths specificially I can not say something straight forward,
> but the dog/wolf motiv is very common in Scandinavia and the  areas
> around the South coast of the Baltic where also the Goths lived. The
> Torsö plates e.g. show warriors in wolfguise, you have the dogs/wolves
> of Óðinn often reproduced in later German carnevals. The Langobards had
> the dog as their special totem. I suggest you read Otto Höflers
> "Geheimbünde der Germanen", Moritz Diesterweg Verlag, Frankfurt a/M
> 1934, where you can find a lot of these things. It also contains a
> special supplement about werewolfs in Balticum and a lot of information
> about Scandinavian and German werewolfs and the odinistic warrior cults.




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