The Wild Hunt Legend Explained

There's a lot to be said about our modern, 21st-century life. It's filled with a lot of great things, like online gaming, refrigerators, and smartphones, but it's also an undeniable fact that society has lost something, too. It's easy to look back at the stories our ancestors told and roll our collective eyes because clearly, there's no such thing as a half-fish, half-monk that lives in the oceans and (presumably) serves the higher powers alongside his fellow underwater clergy members. Right? At the times these tales were told, though, they were a brilliant way to explain natural phenomena. It's that imagination and story-telling that deserves some serious respect.

Imagine: Midwinter nights, somewhere around the 10th century. There's no electricity, no lights aside from candles and the fires burning in the hearth to drive back the darkness and the cold. Food stores are scarce, and people have to rely on what they put aside and hope it's enough to get them through until spring. The land outside is snow-covered and frozen, the birds have fallen silent, the wind whips through the naked trees ... and sound? Sound carries.

It's not surprising, then, that Norse Mythology says ancient people from across Europe have told tales of just what those distant sounds are, carried on the icy winds of a midwinter night. The barking dogs, the horses ... the noises no one could explain. They were the sounds of the Wild Hunt, and it's a good thing everyone was safely inside.

While there were a lot of different, local versions of the Wild Hunt story, one of the most famously and oft-told was of the one led by Odin. According to History Today, Odin was said to lead a massive hunt across his entire domain each midwinter, and it was a terrifying ride.

Joining him on the ride were pretty much anyone and everyone ever said to join in such a hunt: Behind him trailed the souls of the dead, mythological creatures like trolls, and some of his fellow deities. That included Thor, who rode alongside him in a chariot drawn by goats. Odin, meanwhile, rode his eight-legged horse Sleipnir, and — perhaps unsurprisingly for a god of the wind — he caused storms to sweep along behind the chaotic ride that was also known as Asgardreia.

What were they looking for? According to Orkneyjar, they were looking to gather the souls of the recently dead, who would be condemned to join their annual ride. Anyone who was unfortunate enough to glimpse the riders but not be swept away was said to be condemned to an imminent death, while the passage of the riders and the storm that followed was believed to herald disaster, death, plague, or starvation. Given the harshness of ancient winters with none of our modern comforts, it's safe to say that the portent was generally accurate.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm might be most famous for their fairy tales, but as Pook Press says, the brothers were much more than folklorists — they were also librarians who studied linguistics, culture, politics, and the nation's legal history. They're the reason that stories like "Rumpelstiltskin" and "The Frog Prince" were plucked from the relative obscurity of Germany's oral folklore traditions, written down, and translated to be shared around the world. According to History Today, Jacob was the first to write down the Wild Hunt legends.

In 1835, he published "Deutsche Mythologie," in which he researched the connections between the Wild Hunt — or wutende heer — and both the old pagan gods and the emergence of Christianity. He wrote that when Christianity changed the way people worshiped, "[Odin] lost his sociable character ... and assumed the aspect of a dark and dreadful power, that still had a certain amount of influence left. ... he wandered and hovered in the air, a spectre and a devil."

Grimm also recorded similar tales, and interestingly, one of those had the hunt set during Switzerland's longest summer nights. That, he wrote, was led by "a subterranean infernal deity" that would destroy anyone who got in the hunt's path. Others told of clever peasants outwitting the gods of the hunt, and another told of a woman who — after claiming the hunt was better than heaven — found her daughters turned into hunting dogs, and they were all condemned to hunt for eternity.

Early Christians were good at co-opting pagan stories and making them serve a Christian narrative, and according to Medievalists, that's exactly what happened with the Wild Hunt in the 12th century. The Christian version was first recorded by the writer Orderic Vitalis. He claimed the story had been told by a priest named Walchelin, who had the bad luck to get up close and personal with the hunt.

Walchelin, the story says, was walking on the outskirts of his parish on January 1, 1091. He heard a group of riders approaching and, thinking they were military men, ducked off the road to hide. He didn't get that far, though, and was stopped by a massive figure carrying a mace. The figure told him to stand and watch, so he did — thousands of people went by, all carrying their worldly possessions, many sobbing and crying. It wasn't long before he recognized some of them as members of his parish who had recently died.

Walchelin decided to try to grab one of the horses to follow the procession and, in doing so, got into a bit of a scuffle with one of the knights. Another came to his rescue and revealed himself to be the priest's dead brother. He explained that he had no choice but to follow, condemned to walk with the procession until he was deemed penitent and was allowed to pass on from this purgatory.

The Christian clergy had a very important lesson to teach those they were converting, and that was getting them to accept the idea that the only way anyone was going to have a peaceful afterlife was to embrace God. One of the ways they illustrated just how important it was to live an entire life according to Christian doctrine was to put a saint at the head of the Wild Hunt. According to a local folklore blog, Bonjour From Brittany, some stories from this particular area of Europe put a nobleman named Hubert front and center in the Hunt. Hubert, the story goes, was born in 656 and later lost both his wife in childbirth. In despair, he retreated to the woods, where he did nothing but hunt — even on Good Friday. It was on one of those sacred days that he came across a white stag with a crucifix over his head. (That, says The Washington Post, is the imagery of Jägermeister.)

The stag warned him that he was on the path straight to hell, and while Hubert did change his ways and was later made the patron saint of hunters, Brittany folklore says that he still needed to pay for the sinful life he'd led. And pay, he did: He was condemned to lead a Wild Hunt that was aptly called Saint Hubert's Hunt, and he would keep riding until Judgment Day.

There's no denying that the stories of the Wild Hunt are terrifying, no matter who leads it and who rides alongside them. That wasn't the only part of the story, though, and tales also told of what would happen to anyone unfortunate enough to witness the Hunt in person. Medievalists claims that some stories — particularly in Ireland — said that the Hunt would attack anyone and anything in their path, up to and including entire armies. Bonjour From Brittany reports that many stories from this area of Europe say that the only creatures safe from the Wild Hunt were wild animals — any domestic animals, livestock, or people who found themselves in the riders' path would die.

Tales translated by the University of Pittsburgh's D.L. Ashliman have still more variations. A story from Cornwall suggests that the power of prayer could protect a person faced with otherworldly hunters, while a German tale recounted the story of a poor woman who came across the Hunt while walking home. She was saved by the intervention of an underground spirit called the Mine-Monk and given enough silver to live comfortably for the rest of her life.

Not all German tales work out so well: There's another of a mill worker who heard the Hunt approach and went out to see them for himself. He called out to the riders, who responded by throwing a woman's severed leg at him.