What is the Wild Hunt?
On stormy nights, especially during the Rauhnächte, the nights between Christmas and Epiphany, a host of the dead, hounds and horses is said to sweep across the sky. People hear hooves, horns and barking. Anyone who meets it throws themselves to the ground or stays indoors. Anyone who looks at it or mocks it is carried off or has a piece of human flesh thrown at them.
Who leads it
The leaders vary from region to region. In northern Germany and Scandinavia it is often Wode or Odin, in the south Frau Holle or Perchta. Elsewhere a cursed huntsman rides at the front, one who went hunting on Sundays during his lifetime. In France and England, people spoke of the Mesnie Hellequin, a ghostly procession already described by the monk Ordericus Vitalis in the 12th century.
Origins and interpretation
In his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, Jacob Grimm linked the ghostly host to Wotan and saw it as a remnant of Germanic pagan belief. This reading is still influential, but it is contested. The medieval accounts point more to a Christian picture: an army of poor souls who cannot find rest. The motif lives on as a custom in the Perchten runs of the Alpine region.
Episode on this topic
- What Is the Wild Hunt? (in German)
- Related: Krampus and the Companions of Saint Nicholas
Further reading
- Jacob Grimm: Deutsche Mythologie, 1835.
- Ordericus Vitalis: Historia ecclesiastica, Book 8.