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150-567: The Wild Hunt is a folklore motif occurring across various northern, western and eastern European societies, appearing in the religions of the Germans, Celts, and Slavs (motif E501 per Thompson ). Wild Hunts typically involve a chase led by a mythological figure escorted by a ghostly or supernatural group of hunters engaged in pursuit. The leader of the hunt is often a named figure associated with Odin in Germanic legends, but may variously be

300-528: A compound formed from Old Norse : āss ("god") and garðr ("enclosure"). Possible anglicisations include: Ásgarthr, Ásgard, Ásegard, Ásgardr, Asgardr, Ásgarth, Asgarth, Esageard, and Ásgardhr. Asgard is named twice in Eddic poetry . The first case is in Hymiskviða , when Thor and Týr journey from Asgard to Hymir 's hall to obtain a cauldron large enough to brew beer for a feast for Ægir and

450-569: A hof named Glaðsheimr at Iðavöllr , in the centre of the burg, or walled city, with a high seat for Odin and twelve seats for other gods. It is described as like gold both on the inside and the outside, and as the best of all buildings in the world. They also built Vingólf for the female gods, which is described as both a hall and a hörgr , and a forge with which they crafted objects from gold. After Ragnarök , some gods such as Váli and Baldr will meet at Iðavöllr where Asgard once stood and discuss matters together. There they will also find in

600-463: A street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book Children's Games in Street and Playground . Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by

750-432: A binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in

900-408: A child's birthday party, including verbal lore ( Happy Birthday song ), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games ( Musical chairs ) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration,

1050-489: A community. Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the living museum has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how

1200-473: A curse and a pack of demons deep in the woods. He might also have asked God to let him hunt until Judgement Day , as has ewiger Jäger (the eternal hunter). The majority of the tales deal with some person encountering the Wild Hunt. If this person stands up against the hunters, he will be punished. If he helps the hunt, he will be awarded money, gold, or, most often, a leg of a slain animal or human, which

1350-518: A drink, only to steal Dando's game and then Dando himself, with his dogs giving chase. The sight was long claimed to have been seen in the area. Another legend recounted how King Herla, having visited the Fairy King , was warned not to step down from his horse until the greyhound he carried jumped down; he found that three centuries had passed during his visit, and those of his men who dismounted crumbled to dust; he and his men are still riding, because

1500-615: A historical or legendary figure like Theodoric the Great , the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag , the dragon slayer Sigurd , the Welsh psychopomp Gwyn ap Nudd , biblical figures such as Herod , Cain , Gabriel , or the Devil , or an unidentified lost soul. The hunters are generally the souls of the dead or ghostly dogs, sometimes fairies , valkyries , or elves . Seeing the Wild Hunt

1650-553: A modern Pagan group in Norfolk during the late 1990s, stating that they used this mythology "as a means of confronting the dark of nature as a process of initiation." Referred to as the "Wild Hunt Challenge" by those running it, it took place on Halloween and involved participants walking around a local area of woodland in the daytime, and then repeating that task as a timed competition at night, "to gain mastery over an area of Gwyn ap Nudd's hunting ground". If completed successfully, it

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1800-436: A one-wheeled cart. In parts of Småland , it appears that people believed that Odin hunted with large birds when the dogs got tired. When it was needed, he could transform a bevy of sparrows into an armed host. If houses were built on former roads, they could be burnt down, because Odin did not change his plans if he had formerly travelled on a road there. Not even charcoal kilns could be built on disused roads, because if Odin

1950-516: A problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife, we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. There are numerous other definitions. According to William Bascom major article on

2100-469: A rage, revealing his identity as a jötunn. Thor then kills the builder with Mjöllnir , before any harm to the gods is done. The chapter does not explicitly name Asgard as the fortress but they are commonly identified by scholars. In Gylfaginning , the central cosmic tree Yggdrasil is described as having three roots that hold it up; one of these goes to the Æsir, which has been interpreted as meaning Asgard. In Grímnismál , this root instead reaches over

2250-605: A scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group. Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration , such as Thanksgiving or New Year's . It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans . This category also includes

2400-509: A shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought

2550-426: A small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture. Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture , such as thumbs down or a handshake . It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in

2700-450: A social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond

2850-400: A swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from

3000-456: A variety of facets. These include his long white beard and his gray horse for nightly rides. "As far as practitioners of nature spiritualities are concerned, the Wild Hunt offers an initiation into the wild and an opening up of the senses; a sense of dissolution of self in confrontation with fear and death, an exposure to a 'whirlwind pulse that runs through life'. In short, engagement with the Hunt

3150-474: A vertical axis, leading upwards towards the heavens. There is debate between scholars over whether the gods were conceived of as living in the heavens, with some aligning their views with Snorri, and others proposing that he at times presents the system in a Christian framework and that this organisation is not seen in either Eddic or skaldic poetry . The concept of attempting to create a spatial cosmological model has itself been criticised by scholars who argue that

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3300-572: A whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself. The term folkloristics , along with the alternative name folklore studies , became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with

3450-492: Is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group. This folklore can include jokes, sayings, and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part, it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition, or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge

3600-413: Is a bid to restore a reciprocity and harmony between humans and nature." — Susan Greenwood. Various practitioners of the contemporary pagan religion of Wicca have drawn upon folklore involving the Wild Hunt to inspire their own rites. In their context, the leader of the Wild Hunt is the goddess Hecate . The anthropologist Susan Greenwood provided an account of one such Wild Hunt ritual performed by

3750-457: Is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in

3900-536: Is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e., the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts . These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore are no longer considered to be limited to that which

4050-574: Is also known among the Sorbs and among the South Slavic Slovenes Divja Jaga ( Slovene : "the wild hunting party" or "wild hunt"). However, scholars of Slavic folklore have noted it is a motif of foreign, specifically German(ic), origin. In Belarusian, it is called Дзiкае Паляванне (Belarusian: "wild hunt"). As Belarus used to be part of Poland, the motif's presence likely came from there as an intermediary. In Italy , it

4200-400: Is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics,

4350-485: Is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century. As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in

4500-411: Is based on Gottfried August Bürger 's ballad Der wilde Jäger . In act 1 of Richard Wagner 's 1870 opera Die Walküre , Siegmund relates that he has been pursued by “Das wütende Heer”, which is an indication to the audience that it is Wotan himself who has called up the storm which has driven him (Siegmund) to Hunding's dwelling. The subject of Stan Jones ' American country song " Ghost Riders in

4650-934: Is called Caccia Morta ("Dead Hunt"), Caccia infernale (" infernal hunt ") or Caccia selvaggia ("Wild Hunt"); in Galician Estantiga (from Hoste Antiga "the old army") or Hostia ("Army") or in Spanish Compaña and Santa Compaña ("troop, company") in Galicia ; Güestia in Asturias ; Hueste de Ánimas ("troop of ghosts") in León ; and Hueste de Guerra ("war company") or Cortejo de Gente de Muerte ("deadly retinue") in Extremadura . "Another class of specters will prove more fruitful for our investigation: they, like

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4800-515: Is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels. The word folklore , a compound of folk and lore , was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms , who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore , comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It

4950-404: Is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore . As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this

5100-541: Is found in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore , published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families , occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations. Folklorist Richard Dorson explained in 1976 that

5250-451: Is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within

5400-559: Is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other. That said, each artifact is unique; in fact, one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products, and any variations are considered mistakes. It is, however, just this required variation that makes identification and classification of

5550-639: Is known as Cŵn Annwn ( Welsh : "hounds of Annwn "). In France, the "Host" was known in Latin sources as Familia Hellequini and in Old French as Maisnie Hellequin (the "household or retinue of Hellequin"). The Old French name Hellequin was probably borrowed from Middle English Herla king ( Old English * Her(e)la-cyning ) by the Romance-speaking Norman invaders of Britain . Other similar figures appear in

5700-427: Is led by a living person (usually a parishioner of a particular church) carrying a cross or a cauldron of holy water (sometimes they carry both), followed by several of the souls of the dead holding lit candles. According to scholar Susan Greenwood, the Wild Hunt "primarily concerns an initiation into the wild, untamed forces of nature in its dark and chthonic aspects." Metamorphoses, cavalcades, ecstasies, followed by

5850-525: Is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types , by definition, they have a consistent structure and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English, the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke . It might be one you have already heard, but it might be one that

6000-558: Is not mentioned at any point in the poem. Furthermore, Völuspá references Iðavöllr , one of the most common meeting places of Æsir gods, which in Gylfaginning , Snorri locates in the centre of Asgard. The Prose Edda 's euhemeristic prologue portrays the Æsir gods as people that travelled from the East to northern territories. According to Snorri, Asgard represented the town of Troy before Greek warriors overtook it. After

6150-400: Is often cursed in a way that makes it impossible to be rid of it. In this case, the person has to find a priest or magician able to ban it or trick the Wild Hunt into taking the leg back by asking for salt, which the hunt can not deliver. In many versions, a person staying right in the middle of the road during the encounter is safe. In Scandinavia, the leader of the hunt was Odin and the event

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6300-411: Is old or obsolete. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic; it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers ". In direct contrast to high culture , where any single work of a named artist

6450-508: Is portrayed as being a city in Asia or Troy , however in other accounts that likely more accurately reflect its conception in Old Nordic religion , it is depicted as not conforming to a naturalistic geographical position. In these latter accounts, it is found in a range of locations such as over the rainbow bridge Bifröst , in the middle of the world and over the sea. The word Ásgarðr is

6600-433: Is presented in a vague and often contradictory manner when viewed from a naturalistic standpoint. Snorri places Asgard in the centre of the world, surrounded by Midgard and then the lands inhabited by jötnar , all of which are finally encircled by the sea. He also locates the homes of the gods in the heavens. This had led to the proposition of a system of concentric circles, centred on Asgard or Yggdrasil, and sometimes with

6750-434: Is protected by copyright law , folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can, however, shift and morph; for example,

6900-444: Is sometimes an undead noble, most often called Count Hackelberg or Count Ebernburg, who is cursed to hunt eternally because of misbehaviour during his lifetime, and in some versions died from injuries of a slain boar's tusk. Dogs and wolves were generally involved. In some areas, werewolves were depicted as stealing beer and sometimes food in houses. Horses were portrayed as two-, three-, six-, and eight-legged, often with fiery eyes. In

7050-578: Is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftspeople and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsperson. Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as folk art , characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art

7200-403: Is still transmitted orally and, indeed, continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate. Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore. The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at

7350-669: Is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration. In Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution , everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts can still be found all around us, with possibly

7500-430: Is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group frequently passed along by word of mouth. The concept of folk has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk is a social group that includes two or more people with common traits who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk

7650-540: Is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community. The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness, framing ,

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7800-428: Is used to confirm and reinforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. It can also be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folk dance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in

7950-842: The Bicentennial Celebration , folkloristics in the United States came of age. "…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." Added to

8100-633: The Devil's Dandy Dogs (in Cornwall ), Gabriel's Hounds (in northern England), and Ghost Riders (in North America). In Scandinavia, the Wild Hunt is known as Oskoreia (commonly interpreted as 'The Asgard Ride'), and as Oensjægeren ('Odin's Hunters'). The names Åsgårdsrei (' Asgard Ride' as attested in parts of Trøndelag ), Odens jakt and Vilda jakten ( Swedish : 'the hunt of Odin ' and 'wild hunt') are also attested. At

8250-619: The Halloween celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as tooth brushing , which

8400-616: The Historic–Geographic Method , a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century. When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries, this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it

8550-566: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs . Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky . Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks . The area of ecclesiastical folklore , which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by

8700-584: The Æsir ") is a location associated with the gods. It appears in several Old Norse sagas and mythological texts , including the Eddas , however it has also been suggested to be referred to indirectly in some of these sources. It is described as the fortified home of the Æsir gods and is often associated with gold imagery and contains many other locations known in Nordic mythology such as Valhöll , Iðavöllr and Hlidskjálf . In some euhemeristic accounts, Asgard

8850-509: The 'Host' variants, principally found in southern Germany, a man went out in front, warning people to get out of the streets before the coming of the Host's armed men, who were sometimes depicted as doing battle with one another. A feature peculiar to the 'Hunt' version, generally encountered in northern Germany, was the pursuit and capture of one or more female demons, or a hart in some versions, while some others did not have prey at all. Sometimes,

9000-585: The 'Hunt', and parts of the north know the 'Host'. It was also known in Germany as the Wildes Heer ('Wild Army'), its leader was given various identities, including Wodan (or " Woden "), Knecht Ruprecht (compare Krampus ), Berchtold (or Berchta ), and Holda (or "Holle"). The Wild Hunt is also known from post-medieval folklore. In England, it was known as Herlaþing ( Old English : ' Herla 's assembly'), Woden's Hunt , Herod's Hunt , Cain's Hunt ,

9150-749: The 2011 film Thor . After that, Thor becomes a regular character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reappears in several films, including the Avengers series. Asgard becomes the central element of the film Thor: Ragnarok , where it is destroyed following the Old Norse mythos. These and other Norse mythology elements also appear in video games, TV series, and books based in and on the Marvel Universe, although these depictions do not closely follow historical sources. Asgard

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9300-500: The American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined

9450-627: The French folklore, such as Le Grand-Veneur , a hunter who chased with dogs in the forest of Fontainebleau , and a Poitou tradition where a hunter who has faulted by hunting on Sunday is condemned to redeem himself by hunting during the night, along with its French Canadian version the Chasse-galerie . Among West Slavs , it is known as divoký hon or štvaní ( Czech : "wild hunt", "baiting"), dzëwô/dzëkô jachta ( Kashubian : "wild hunt"), Dziki Gon or Dziki Łów ( Polish ). It

9600-561: The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies. Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in

9750-668: The Mediterranean regions, "at least not easily". An abundance of different tales of the Wild Hunt has been recorded in Germany. The leader, often called der Schimmelreiter , is generally identified with the god Wotan , but sometimes with a feminine figure: the wife of Wotan, Holda ('the friendly one'; also Holle or Holt), Fru Waur, or Fru Gode in Northern Germany; or Perchta (the bright one; also Berchta, Berhta or Berta) in Southern Germany. The leader also

9900-537: The Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the social sciences , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at

10050-513: The Sky " of 1948, which tells of cowboys chasing the Devil 's cattle through the night sky, resembles the European myth. Swedish folk musician The Tallest Man on Earth released an album in 2010 entitled The Wild Hunt , and in 2013 the black metal band Watain , also Swedish, released an album with the same title . German folk band Versengold released the song "Die wilde Jagt" in 2021, as

10200-603: The United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today. These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve

10350-714: The Viking as a frozen wasteland dominated by the Halls of Valhalla on a high plateau. In the film the Æsir are depicted as spoilt children Thor first appeared in the Marvel Universe within comic series Journey into Mystery in the issues #83 during August 1962. Following this release, he becomes one of the central figures in the comics along with Loki and Odin. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe , Thor and Loki make their first appearance together in

10500-453: The Wild Hunt was first documented by the German folklorist Jacob Grimm who first published it in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie . It was in this work that he popularized the term Wilde Jagd ("Wild Hunt") for the phenomenon. Grimm's methodological approach was rooted in the idea, common in nineteenth-century Europe, that modern folklore represented a fossilized survival of the beliefs of

10650-607: The Wild Hunt, with Odin leading the hunting party. This painting is featured on the cover of Bathory 's 1988 album, Blood Fire Death . The Wild Hunt is the subject of Transcendental Étude No. 8 in C minor, " Wilde Jagd " (Wild Hunt) by Franz Liszt, and appears in Karl Maria von Weber 's 1821 opera Der Freischütz and in Arnold Schoenberg 's oratorio Gurre-Lieder of 1911. César Franck 's orchestral tone poem Le Chasseur maudit ( The Accursed Huntsman )

10800-449: The appointment of a disastrous abbot for the monastery, Henry d'Angely, in 1127: Many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge, and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he-goats, and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers, and horrible. This was seen in the very deer park of the town of Peterborough, and in all the woods that stretch from that same town to Stamford, and in

10950-413: The artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means". This

11100-411: The basis of comparative mythology . Grimm believed that a group of stories represented a folkloristic survival of Germanic paganism , but this is disputed by other, modern scholars who claim that comparable folk myths are found throughout Northern Europe , Western Europe , and Central Europe . Lotte Motz noted, however, that the motif abounds "above all in areas of Germanic speech." Grimm popularised

11250-423: The business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole. This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore. Childlore

11400-458: The castles of Rodenstein and Schnellerts and to the Odenwald. In the influential book Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (1934), Otto Höfler argued that the German motifs of the "Wild Hunt" should be interpreted as the spectral troops led by the god Wuotan which had a ritualistic counterpart in the living bands of ecstatic warriors (Old Norse berserkir ), allegedly in a cultic union with

11550-551: The community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality. The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content. Asgard In Nordic mythology , Asgard ( Old Norse : Ásgarðr ; "enclosure of

11700-457: The complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of

11850-472: The continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior ), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group. These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists , who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With

12000-609: The custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across

12150-436: The dead warriors of the past. Hans Peter Duerr (1985) noted that for modern readers, it "is generally difficult to decide, on the basis of the sources, whether what is involved in the reports about the appearance of the Wild Hunt is merely a demonic interpretation of natural phenomenon, or whether we are dealing with a description of ritual processions of humans changed into demons." Historian Ronald Hutton noted that there

12300-521: The defeat, Trojans moved to northern Europe , where they became a dominant group due to their "advanced technologies and culture". Eventually, other tribes began to perceive the Trojans and their leader Trór ( Thor in Old Norse) as gods. In Gylfaginning , Snorri Sturluson describes how during the creation of the world, the gods made the earth and surrounded it with the sea. They made the sky from

12450-456: The defining features a challenge. While this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves. Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in

12600-527: The developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries. Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games. A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson. This field of study is represented in The Folklore Historian , an annual journal sponsored by

12750-437: The distant past. In developing his idea of the Wild Hunt, he mixed together recent folkloric sources with textual evidence dating to the medieval and early modern periods. This approach came to be criticized within the field of folkloristics during the 20th century as more emphasis was placed on the "dynamic and evolving nature of folklore". Grimm interpreted the Wild Hunt phenomenon as having pre-Christian origins, arguing that

12900-539: The egress of the soul in the shape of an animal—these are different paths to a single goal. Between animals and souls, animals and the dead, animals and the beyond, there exists a profound connection. The role of Wotan's Wild Hunt during the Yuletide period has been theorized to have influenced the development of the Dutch Christmas figure Sinterklaas , and by extension his American counterpart Santa Claus , in

13050-410: The established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice. Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in

13200-434: The extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as

13350-496: The first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups, and epochs, giving rise to

13500-639: The first single from their 2022 album Was kost die Welt . The Wild Hunt appears in Marvel Comics , primarily the Thor series, and is led by Malekith the Accursed , the Dark Elf King of Svartalfheim and one of Thor's archenemies. Folklore Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression . Just as essential as

13650-405: The forest turned silent and only a whining sound and dog barks could be heard. In western Sweden and sometimes in the east as well, it has been said that Odin was a nobleman or even a king who had hunted on Sundays and therefore was doomed to hunt down and kill supernatural beings until the end of time. According to certain accounts, Odin does not ride, but travels in a wheeled vehicle, specifically

13800-416: The form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts . Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore

13950-488: The furious host: the wild hunter passes into the wood-wife, Wôden into Frau Gaude ." He added his opinion that this female figure was Woden's wife. Discussing martial elements of the Wild Hunt, Grimm commented that "it marches as an army, it portends the outbreak of war." He added that a number of figures that had been recorded as leading the hunt, such as " Wuotan, Huckelbernd, Berholt, bestriding their white war-horse , armed and spurred, appear still as supreme directors of

14100-490: The game of ninepins , the chief employments of ancient heroes: an array which, less tied down to a definite time, explains more the natural phenomenon." He believed that under the influence of Christianisation, the story was converted from being that of a "solemn march of gods" to being "a pack of horrid spectres, dashed with dark and devilish ingredients". A little earlier, in 1823, Felicia Hemans records this legend in her poem The Wild Huntsman , linking it here specifically to

14250-411: The generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies

14400-463: The gods grow desperate as it becomes apparent that the jötunn will construct the burg on time. To their surprise, his stallion contributes much of the progress, swiftly moving boulders and rocks. To deal with the problem, Loki comes up with a plan whereupon he changes his appearance to that of a mare, and distracts Svaðilfari to slow down construction. Without the help of his stallion, the builder realises he cannot complete his task in time and goes into

14550-502: The gods. The second instance is in Þrymskviða when Loki is attempting to convince Thor to dress up as Freyja in order to get back Mjölnir by claiming that without his hammer to protect them, jötnar would soon be living in Asgard. Grímnismál contains among its cosmological descriptions, a number of abodes of the gods, such as Álfheim , Nóatún and Valhalla , which some scholars have identified as being in Asgard. Asgard

14700-640: The golden grove Glasir . It also records a name for Thor as 'Defender of Ásgard' ( Old Norse : verjandi Ásgarðs ). In the Ynglinga saga , found in Heimskringla , Snorri describes Asgard as a city in Asia, based on a perceived, but erroneous, connection between the words for Asia and Æsir. In the opening stanzas of the Saga of the Ynglings, Asgard is the capital of Asaland, a section of Asia east of

14850-441: The grass the golden chess pieces that the Æsir had once owned. Later, the section describes how an unnamed jötunn came to the gods with his stallion, Svaðilfari and offered help in building a burg for the gods in three winters, asking in return for the sun, moon, and marriage with Freyja . Despite Freyja's opposition, together the gods agree to fulfill his request if he completes his work in just one winter. As time goes on,

15000-460: The greyhound has yet to jump down. The myth of the Wild Hunt has through the ages been modified to accommodate other gods and folk heroes, among them King Arthur and, more recently, in a Dartmoor folk legend , Sir Francis Drake . At Cadbury Castle in Somerset, an old lane near the castle was called King Arthur's Lane and even in the 19th century, the idea survived that on wild winter nights

15150-637: The hunt is particularly associated with Wistman's Wood . The Santa Compaña (known also in Galician as: Rolda , As da nuite , Pantalla , Avisóns or Pantaruxada ; in Asturian as Güestia , Güeste , Güestida or Güéstiga ; in Spanish as Estantigua ) is a mythical belief in Northwestern Spain and northern Portugal which consists in a procession of ghosts or souls. The procession

15300-542: The hunters are rather from a faery otherworld, where the Wild Hunt was the hosting of the fairies ; its leaders also varied, but they included Gwydion , Gwynn ap Nudd , King Arthur , Nuada , King Herla , Woden , the Devil and Herne the Hunter . Many legends are told of their origins, as in that of "Dando and his dogs" or "the dandy dogs": Dando, wanting a drink but having exhausted what his huntsmen carried, declared he would go to hell for it. A stranger came and offered

15450-455: The ignes fatui, include unchristened babes , but instead of straggling singly on the earth as fires, they sweep through forest and air in whole companies with a horrible din. This is the widely spread legend of the furious host , the furious hunt , which is of high antiquity, and interweaves itself, now with gods, and now with heroes. Look where you will, it betrays its connexion with heathenism." — Folklorist Jacob Grimm. The concept of

15600-404: The individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event. The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore

15750-417: The items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving heritage industry . This list represents just

15900-431: The job of folklorists..." Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs. Transmission is a communicative process requiring

16050-686: The king and his hounds could be heard rushing along with it. In certain parts of Britain, the hunt is said to be that of hell-hounds chasing sinners or the unbaptized. In Devon these are known as Yeth (Heath) or Wisht Hounds, in Cornwall Dando and his Dogs or the Devil and his Dandy Dogs, in Wales the Cwn Annwn, the Hounds of Hell, and in Somerset as Gabriel Ratchets or Retchets (dogs). In Devon

16200-408: The language of a folklore performance. Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as

16350-446: The male figure who appeared in it was a survival of folk beliefs about the god Wodan who had "lost his sociable character, his near familiar features, and assumed the aspect of a dark and dreadful power... a specter and a devil." Grimm believed that this male figure was sometimes replaced by a female counterpart, whom he referred to as Holda and Berchta . In his words, "not only Wuotan and other gods, but heathen goddesses too, may head

16500-416: The middle of the world a city which is called Ásgard; men call it Troy. There dwelt the gods and their kindred; and many tidings and tales of it have come to pass both on earth and aloft. There is one abode called Hlidskjálf , and when Allfather sat in the high-seat there, he looked out over the whole world and saw every man's acts, and knew all things which he saw. After Asgard is made, the gods then built

16650-478: The most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes

16800-411: The necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds

16950-460: The next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across

17100-664: The night the monks heard them sounding and winding their horns. Reliable witnesses were said to have given the number of huntsmen as twenty or thirty, and it is said, in effect, that this went on for nine weeks, ending at Easter. Orderic Vitalis (1075–c. 1142), an English monk cloistered at St Evroul-en-Ouche , in Normandy , reported a similar cavalcade seen in January 1091, which he said were "Herlechin's troop" ( familia Herlechini ; cf. Harlequin ). While these earlier reports of Wild Hunts were recorded by clerics and portrayed as diabolic, in late medieval romances, such as Sir Orfeo ,

17250-415: The oral traditions did not form a naturalistic, structured system that aimed to be internally geographically consistent. An alternative proposal is that the world should be conceived of as a number of realms connected by passages that cannot be typically traversed. This would explain how Asgard can be located both to the east and west of the realm of men, over the sea and over Bifröst. It has been noted that

17400-491: The past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By

17550-531: The performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects. This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in

17700-506: The period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder , whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France , Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building . This process

17850-614: The realm of men. The bridge Bifröst is told to span from the heavens to the earth and over it the Æsir cross each day to hold council beneath Yggdrasil at the Urðarbrunnr . Based on this, Bifröst is commonly interpreted as the bridge to Asgard. Asgard is mentioned briefly throughout Skáldskaparmál as the name for the home of the Æsir, as in Gylfaginning . In this section, a number of locations are described as lying within Asgard including Valhalla, and in front of its doors,

18000-594: The river Tana-kvísl or Vana-Kvísl (kvísl is "arm"), which Snorri explains is the river Tanais (now Don), flowing into the Black Sea. Odin then leaves to settle in the northern part of the world and leaves his brothers Vili and Vé to rule over the city. When the euhemerised Odin dies, the account states that the Swedes believed he had returned to Asgard and would live there forever. Cosmology in Old Nordic religion

18150-408: The rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society. Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the social sciences , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s, it was understood that social groups , i.e., folk groups, were all around us; each individual

18300-420: The same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series ( Alphabet song ). They also provide

18450-410: The second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context

18600-521: The self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties, which are not generally played at other times. Adding to

18750-607: The skull of Ymir and settled the jötnar on the shores of the earth. They set down the brows of Ymir, forming Midgard , and in the centre of the world they built Asgard, which he identifies as Troy : Þar næst gerðu þeir sér borg í miðjum heimi, er kölluð er Ásgarðr. Þat köllum vér Trója. Þar byggðu goðin ok ættir þeira, ok gerðust þaðan af mörg tíðendi ok greinir bæði á jörðu ok í lofti. Þar er einn staðr, er Hliðskjálf heitir, ok þá er Óðinn settist þar í hásæti, þá sá hann of alla heima ok hvers manns athæfi ok vissi alla hluti, þá er hann sá. Next they made for themselves in

18900-444: The sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it. Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take

19050-403: The speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm , where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order, and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. Verbal folklore

19200-412: The study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group. Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this

19350-405: The study of folklore is "concerned with the study of traditional culture, or the unofficial culture" that is the folk culture, "as opposed to the elite culture, not for the sake of proving a thesis but to learn about the mass of [humanity] overlooked by the conventional disciplines." Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For

19500-470: The study of folklore. With the increasing theoretical sophistication of the social sciences , it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated; it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group, it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them." Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during

19650-476: The tales associate the hunter with a dragon or the devil. The lone hunter ( der Wilde Jäger ) is most often riding a horse, seldom a horse-drawn carriage, and usually has several hounds in his company. If the prey is mentioned, it is most often a young woman, either guilty or innocent. Gottfried August Bürger 's ballad Der wilde Jäger describes the fate of a nobleman who dares to hunt on the Sabbath and finds both

19800-506: The tendency to link Asgard to Troy is part of a wider European cultural practice of claiming Trojan origins for one's culture, first seen in the Aeneid and also featuring in Geoffrey of Monmouth 's Historia regum Britanniae for the founding of Britain . Both Asgard and Valhalla have been portrayed many times in popular culture Asgard is depicted in the 1989 film comedy film Erik

19950-541: The term Wilde Jagd ('Wild Hunt') for the phenomenon. Based on the comparative study of the German folklore , the phenomenon is often referred to as Wilde Jagd ( German : 'Wild Hunt/chase') or Wütendes Heer ('Raging Host/army'). The term 'Hunt' was more common in northern Germany and 'Host' was more used in Southern Germany ; with however no clear dividing line since parts of southern Germany know

20100-420: The topic, there are "four functions to folklore": The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore" , was characterized by being rural, illiterate, and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with

20250-478: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology , using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as

20400-464: The turn of the 20th century, the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

20550-432: The use of symbolic language, and employing the subjunctive mood . In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into

20700-688: The utility of the object. Before the Second World War , folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time. Following

20850-413: The very front of Oskoreia rides Guro Rysserova ('Gudrun Horsetail'), often called Guro Åsgard , who is "big and horrid, her horse black and called Skokse (...)" There is disagreement about the etymology of the word oskorei . The first element has several proposed sources: Åsgård (' Asgard '), oska ('thunder'), or Old Norse ǫskurligr ('dreadful'). The hypothetical Ásgoðreið ('Æsir God Ride')

21000-416: The war for which they, so to speak, give license to mankind." Grimm believed that in pre-Christian Europe, the hunt, led by a god and a goddess, either visited "the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people" or they alternately float "unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war , hunting or

21150-548: Was "a powerful and well-established international scholarly tradition" which argued that the medieval Wild Hunt legends were an influence on the development of the early modern ideas of the Witches' Sabbath . Hutton nevertheless believed that this approach could be "fundamentally challenged". Lotte Motz noted that the motif is found "above all in areas of Germanic speech." While found in areas once settled by Celts, these legends are told less frequently and they are not encountered in

21300-525: Was also once proposed. Only the second element, rei ('ride') from Old Norse reið , is uncontroversial. The word was popularly perceived to be connected to Asgard, as seen in the folk ballad of Sigurd Svein, who is taken to Asgard by Oskoreia and Guro Rysserova . In the Netherlands and Flanders (in northern Belgium ), the Wild Hunt is known as the Buckriders (Dutch: Bokkenrijders) and

21450-437: Was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors. Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th-century European scholars, who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity . Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residues and survivals of

21600-585: Was held that the participant had gained the trust of the wood's spirits, and they would be permitted to cut timber from its trees with which to make a staff. The anthropologist Rachel Morgain reported a "ritual recreation" of the Wild Hunt among the Reclaiming tradition of Wicca in San Francisco . The Åsgårdsreien , Peter Nicolai Arbo 's 1872 oil painting, depicts the Scandinavian version of

21750-487: Was hunting the kiln would be ablaze. One tradition maintains that Odin did not travel further up than an ox wears his yoke, so if Odin was hunting, it was safest to throw oneself onto the ground in order to avoid being hit, a pourquoi story that evolved as an explanation for the popular belief that persons lying at ground level are safer from lightning strikes than are persons who are standing. In Älghult in Småland, it

21900-522: Was referred to as Odens jakt ( Odin's hunt ) and Oskoreia (from Asgårdsreien – the Asgard Ride ). Odin's hunt was heard but rarely seen, and a typical trait is that one of Odin's dogs was barking louder and a second one fainter. Besides one or two shots, these barks were the only sounds that were clearly identified. When Odin's hunt was heard, it meant changing weather in many regions, but it could also mean war and unrest. According to some reports,

22050-489: Was safest to carry a piece of bread and a piece of steel when going to church and back during Yule . The reason was that if one met the rider with the broad-rimmed hat, one should throw the piece of steel in front of oneself, but if one met his dogs first, one should throw the pieces of bread instead. In the Peterborough Chronicle , there is an account of the Wild Hunt's appearance at night, beginning with

22200-513: Was the original folklore , the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century, these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published

22350-419: Was thought to forebode some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. People encountering the Hunt might also be abducted to the underworld or the fairy kingdom. In some instances, it was also believed that people's spirits could be pulled away during their sleep to join the cavalcade. The concept was developed by Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Mythologie (1835) on

22500-409: Was used by gangs of highwaymen for their advantage in the 18th century. In Welsh folklore, Gwyn ap Nudd was depicted as a wild huntsman riding a demon horse who hunts souls at night along with a pack of white-bodied and red-eared "dogs of hell". In Arthurian legends, he is the king of the underworld who makes sure that the imprisoned devils do not destroy human souls. A comparable Welsh folk myth

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