by Kveldulf Hagen Gundarsson
When the winter winds blow and the Yule fires are lit, from the north of Scandinavia down to Switzerland, it is best to stay indoors, safely shut away from the dark forest paths and the wild heaths. Those who wander out by themselves during the Yule-nights may hear a sudden rustling through the tops of the trees — a rustling that might be the wind, though the rest of the wood is still. But then the barking of dogs fills the air, with the hunters behind whooping “Wod! Wod!” a man’s voice cries from above, “Midden in dem Weg!” and the host of wild souls sweeps down, fire flashing from the eyes of the black hounds and hooves of the black horses.
The wise traveler falls down at once in the middle of the road, face down. If he is lucky, he will take no harm other than the cold feet of the black dogs running over his body. More foolish folk are swept up, coming to earth far from home or left dead behind the furious host. Those who join in the Hunter’s cry may get as their share of the booty a piece of human flesh. This is the Wild Hunt of Germanic folklore. It is known by many names — Wutan’s or Wuet’s Army in the southern parts of Germany, the family of Harlequin in France, the Oskorei in Norway, Odensjakt in Denmark and Sweden — but the basic description is always much the same. A great noise of barking and shouting is heard; then a black rider on a black, white, or gray horse, storming through the air with his hounds, followed by a host of strange spirits, is seen. The rider is sometimes headless. Sometimes, particularly in Upper Germany, the spirits show signs of battle-wounds or death by other forms of mischance. Fire spurts from the hooves and eyes of the beasts in the procession. The horses and hounds may be two- or three-legged. Often the newly dead can be recognized in the train. The furious host is always a peril to the human being who comes into its way, though sometimes it leaves rewards as well.The first full description of a procession of ghosts was written in Paris about a night in January of 1092 (Ordericus Vitalis). The priest Wachlin, coming back from visiting a sick person, saw a swarm led by an enormous warrior swinging a mighty club in his hand. The shapes that followed wept and moaned over their sins; then came a horde of corpse-bearers with coffins on their shoulders — the priest counted some 50 coffins. Then women on horseback, seated on saddles with glowing nails stuck into them; then a host of ecclesiasticals on horseback. The priest knew many of these people who had died recently. He concluded at last that he had seen the “familia Herlechini,” of whom many had told him, but in whom he had never believed: Now he had truly seen the dead.
The term “wotigez her” is used in the Middle German Rolandslied to compare the host of the Saracens simultaneously with the host of the Devil and that of Pharaoh. In the 13th-century Diu Urstende, the Jews who have come to capture Christ “with spears, swords, and arrows”are called “daz wtunde her.” In the early 13th-century “Moriz von Craon,” the hero appears bloodily wounded in the bedchamber of his captor, who says to his wife, “The devil is near to us … or the wutende her.” In Rudiger von Munre’s “Von zwein Gesellen” an oath-formula appears “by deus … and by wutungis her.” An Alamannic poem from 1300 describes the sound of thunder in the air, breaking through valley and mountain with armed riders and a mist in which rode “daz wuotes her.” The Middle German “Nachtsegen” (13/14 C), a medieval German version of the “from ghoulies and ghosties / and long-legged beasties / and things that go bump in the dark / good god, protect us” prayer, calls on god and the holy spirit to protect the speaker against “all unholden … Truttan and wutan, / wutanes her and all its (or his) men.” The romance of the prince of Braunschweig has the hero seeing “daz woden here, / where the evil spirits have their dwelling.”
http://www.vinland.org/heathen/mt/wildhunt.html