October 9, 2025 • 39 mins
In the dark forests of the Middle Ages – and the modern stories we tell about it – lurks a powerful, beautiful predator. Sometimes big and bad, sometimes a figure of admiration, the medieval wolf was such a big part of English culture, that it found its way not just into stories, but into the language itself. This week, Danièle speaks with Elizabeth Marshall about where we find wolves in medieval sources, how early English writers saw them, and how wolves both add to – and steal – language.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred and ten
of the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host Danielle Sebalski. In
the dark forests of the medieval world and the modern
(00:23):
stories we tell about it, lurks a powerful, beautiful predator,
sometimes big and bad, sometimes a figure of admiration. The
medieval wolf was such a big part of early English
culture that it found its way not just into stories,
but into the language itself. This week I spoke with
doctor Elizabeth Marshall about wolves in Old English. Elizabeth is
(00:47):
an independent scholar and the author of Wolves in Beowulf
and other Old English texts and the forthcoming Wolf Land
The Lost Wolves of Landscape and Lore, as well as
various academic and public articles on wolves. Our conversation on
where we find wolves and medieval sources, how early English
writers saw them, and how wolves both add to and
(01:10):
steal language itself is coming up right after this. Well,
thank you Elizabeth for joining us to talk about wolves
and Old English. These are both super interesting topics, so
it's great to have you here to talk about both. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So I have to ask you, when we're looking at
wolves in early England, how do we find out anything
about them, like where they are, what they're doing, how
do we find this stuff out?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
So the majority of what we know about wolves comes
kind of filtered through the human lens, through the cultural
artifacts that survive, so primarily literature, some art, some stone work.
There's also kind of hints of more real wolves in
the landscape in place names. There's a really great study
(02:02):
about looking at all of the different wolf place names
throughout England and Scotland and Wales as well, and it
shows you both the types of landscapes that wolves are
kind of associated in these toponyms, but also where the
populations are kind of concentrated, assuming that places are named
for wolves because they have kind of an abundance of wolves.
(02:24):
So this kind of leads to a theory that by
ten sixty six, because there's much fewer wolf place names
in the south, this suggests that wolves have started to
move further northwards because they're being persecuted. The habitat is
not suitable for them anymore, so they're moving further and
further north towards less populated areas and areas that they
(02:47):
are more sheltered from people. There is some archaeological evidence.
You get things like wolf teeth showing up as grave
goods in early graves, but generally speaking, we don't tend
to have very many archaeological records at all, largely because
wolves weren't considered a very useful animal. Their fur is
(03:10):
kind of considered not great in comparison to the fur
of things like stoats or ermine, you know, these really
kind of rich, luxurious furs. There's some evidence of a
modest trade in wolf fairs, but they're generally considered smelly
and not really worth having. They're not eaten. It's considered
a taboo to eat wolves from a Christian perspective, because
(03:32):
they might have eaten a human. There's this perception that
they might have him taken in the flesh of a human,
and then it kind of becomes this issue of cannibalism
or almost if the person eats wolf flesh, so that's
this taboo, and their body parts do show up in
more medicinal or kind of magico medicinal contexts, but generally speaking,
(03:56):
they're not really considered a very useful animal. So if
they're being hunted or being app it's primarily to get
rid of them. Because they're a threat to sheep and
other livestock.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
We were talking briefly about habitat just now, where are
these wolves living, because when we picture the UK today,
there aren't that many forests, like deep forests, but this
is a different landscape back in the day, right.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, So there is a perception that medieval England, particularly
what we think of as dark Age England, which is
a whole problem in itself, but there's this idea that
dark Age England is a place where a peasant will
be traveling through very deep forest and they might be
set upon by wolves or thieves or robbers or what
have you. But actually woodland has very slowly but surely
(04:45):
been in decline for a very very long time, well
beyond the beginning of the Middle Ages, much further back.
So although we do have a lot less woodland today,
it's been a gradual movement towards that point, rather than
a more sudden departure, as it were. There's this kind
of association between wolves and wilderness, so I think it's
(05:05):
one that we have today. It's a very fairy tale,
kind of Gothic image that we have of wolves stalking
through woodland, hunting little girls in red cloaks, But actually
they're not primarily confined to woodlands, particularly because woodland isn't
this kind of wilderness area that we tend to think
(05:27):
of it as. It's a landscape that is exploited quite
heavily for all the resources that it produces. So you
do get wolves or this theory that wolves are living
in the more dense areas of forests, but they're certainly
not confined to those landscapes, so you might find them
in more upland mountainous areas. Or the fens are another
(05:50):
place where it's considered a good habitat for wolves because
it's got abundant wildlife that they can prey on. Maybe
not the kind of wildlife that we tend to think
of the meeting like deer, but you know, they can
survive on fish, they can survive on birds, marine life.
They do very very well in those areas. The only
things that wolves need to survive are prey and shelter
(06:12):
and ideally not persecution from humans. And that's why the
fens are a really good place for them, because fens
are very difficult for people to traverse, especially before areas
of them have been reclaimed and drained so that they
can be built on. So yeah, it's thought that fens
were a fruitful place for wolves be and that's also
(06:32):
reflected in the place name evidence as well. There's hints
of places that are kind of marshy, swampy areas being
associated with wolves, particularly in East Anglia, which has a
very rich wolf tradition, and it's possibly because East Anglia
is an area of England that has lots of finland.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Well. I wanted to get into this because I think
that you're right. People imagine that you're always wondering in
a wood and you're going to be set upon wolves
and it's going to be very scary. I mean, Canada
is much bigger than the UK, but you almost never
see wolves out in the wilderness. They just disappear. They
melt into the landscape really really quickly. But you did
find a charm, which I thought was interesting because this
(07:15):
is going to be a rare occurrence that you'd see
one at all. There is a charm that you found
that involved like, if you have the hair of some
wolves with you, then you're gonna be okay, they're not
going to attack you in the woods. And I was
thinking like this is an unlikely event, but maybe it's
like flying on airplanes, right, It's unlikely, but people still
do superstitious things to keep them safe on an airplane, right, Yeah,
(07:37):
for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And I think it's one of those things where even
today from you know, when we live in an age
where we're very cognizant of the fact that wolves actually
pose very very little danger to us, but I think
it's very rare to come across a person who doesn't
have kind of a little inkling of fear of wolves
(07:58):
just in the back of their minds. And I think
it's kind of the same in early medieval England. You know,
there's a chance that you'll come across a wolf, sure,
but they're almost certainly going to run away from you
before you even know that they were there. They have
an incredible sense of smell, So if humans are coming
into their territory, most likely they're going to be vacating
(08:19):
that territory asap because they don't want anything to do
with humans. So yeah, I think things like the charm are,
like you say, kind of like a just in case thing.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, I think that maybe one of the things that
you're getting at here is that when people think they're
going to come across a wolf. They're not necessarily afraid
they're going to be eaten, but they might be afraid
that their speech is going to be taken from them.
So tell us a little bit about this.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, this was something I was very surprised to learn
about when I was in the research for the book.
So there's this superstition. It begins in the classical world.
There's some evidence that I might have known about it,
but certainly it's known by Virgil, It's known by Theocritus,
a Greek poet. It's known by Pliny, it's known by Ambrose,
(09:08):
it's known by Isidor. It kind of travels all the
way through the classical period until it gets down to
early medieval Europe and to England specifically. So there's this
superstition that if a wolf sees you before you see
the wolf, and I always get that mixed up. It's
a very difficult sentence to say, if a wolf sees
(09:29):
you before you see the wolf, you'll lose your speech,
You'll be struck dumb.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, it's interesting in something that you get at in
the book, where I feel like, when we see one,
it's so spectacular and as you say, they kind of
make the hair stin up on the back of your neck.
When we see one, we are struck dumb because this
is something that you have to sort of look at
and think about it. Am I in danger? But also
they're so beautiful that you are struck dumb. But this
is interesting where if the wolf sees you first, then
(09:57):
you might not be able to speak. It is very
interesting and it leads to a little phrase that people
will throw around in their speech sometimes, which is the
wolf in the story. And I love this. So when
do people say the wolf in the story?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So the wolf in the story is it's a saying
that's kind of idiomatically equivalent to how we use the
phrase speak of the devil. So if you're talking about somebody,
and maybe you're not necessarily saying something very nice about
a person and they come into the room, you stop talking, right,
your speech has been stolen by the appearance of that person.
(10:31):
So that person becomes like the wolf in the story,
that the wolf in the story that you have just
been talking about. They are the subject of your conversation
and you abruptly stop talking when they come in. So yeah,
very similar to the way we say, speak of the devil.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Now, I love that and I would love to bring
that back, but I think it will be like just
among the people who have read your bug of listened
to this podcast, but we can start to make this
catch on, right sure.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, Well, in I think in fred they do still
use wolf rather than devil in that phrase, so I think,
and I think there are some other languages as well.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but yeah,
it's it's something that's died out in English, but I
think there's scope for bringing it back based on the
fact that it's survived in these other languages as well.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, let's start that. Well, you were talking about the devil,
so let's go there for a minute. The wolf is
having associated with the devil, I think, probably for reasons
that might be obvious to us. But tell us why
the world is associated with the devil.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
It stems back to the New Testament of the Bible,
and it's considered to be based in the reality of
the people who are writing down the New Testament, in
that they are a pastoral society and they are kind
of living in fear of their livestock, which are obviously
very important to their livelihood of their livestock being eaten
(11:56):
or taken or sorted by wolves. So that becomes a
very fruitful metaphor in the New Testament for the devil
who is preying on human souls, and particularly in the
context of Christians being metaphorrized as sheep and Christ being
the lamb of God. Yeah, very very fruitful metaphor and
(12:17):
one that I think has an immediacy, particularly in the
early medieval world when sheep farming is so and becoming
ever more important to the medieval economy. It's a very
real and visceral image that probably contributed to people's ideas
of what the devil was and what the devil was
capable of doing, because if you saw a sheep that
(12:38):
had been slaughtered by a wolf, you might make the
connection of that's what the devil will do to my
soul if I don't stay faithful to Christ and to God.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, I think that one of the key parts of this.
I mean, there's the violence of it, the suddenness, but
also the stealth, which is something that I think we'll
get to when we get to more about language in wolves.
But when it comes to this being the devil, this
is a sneaky attack that you don't see coming, you
may not see until after when it's carnage. And I
(13:09):
think that that is an aspect of wolves that maybe
is a bit different than when we think about other
predators in nature. Something that is sort of associated is
their sneakiness, their stealth, perhaps more stealth than I'm thinking about,
Like what's the difference between wolves and foxes? And it's
like more stealth when it comes to wolves, I think,
than slyness, which is more fox like. Would you say
(13:30):
that that is a fair assessment.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, I think that's true. And you've reminded me of
some manuscript images. Quite a common image is a wolf
looking very kind of low to the ground, stealthily stalking
towards a pen of sheep that look a bit terrified.
The other interesting thing about the way wolves operate is
that they sometimes do what is known as surplus killing.
(13:57):
I don't know if it's a behavior that is unique
to wolf, but it's certainly one that wolves are well
known for, in that they will if they find a
source of prey that is both abundant and ripe for
the taking. It could be a herd of deer that
are trapped in heavy snow, or it could be a
flock of sheep that have nowhere to go to escape
(14:17):
from They will just kill all of those animals, and
people kind of take that as evidence for the wolf's
bloodthirstiness and they're kind of thirst for violence and their
inability to stop themselves from slaughtering everything that they see.
But it's actually just one of those very natural behaviors, right.
It's an animal that is programmed to kill because they're
(14:40):
actually very unsuccessful at hunting, which I always think is
quite funny. Wolf hunts. I think less than twenty percent,
maybe even less than ten percent of the time are
actually successful because there's loads of different factors. You know,
deer can outrun them, or dick can stand their ground,
they can seriously injure walls with their legs or their antlers.
So when wolves are presented with this opportunity lots and
(15:03):
lots of prey that are, like I say, right for
the taking, they will take them. But they will come
back to that food source, they'll bury some parts to
eat them later, or they'll keep returning to the kill
site over and over. So yeah, I think there is
that element of stealthiness for sure, and that's again one
of those things that is very good for a metaphorical
(15:24):
devil connection, right, because the devil is sneaky and comes
at you when you're least expecting it. If your faith
waivers even a little bit, the devil can sneak right
in there to prey on your soul. But yeah, there's
also this element of just carnage I think the wolves
are associated with, and it's kind of an unfortunate thing
that it is based in reality, but it's morphed into
(15:45):
this thing that is an excuse for people to persecute
wolves a lot of the time because they think of
them as such a bloodthirsty and vicious animal.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Well, I mean, it's a little bit unfair because if
this was any other creature, they'd say, this is a
fish and it's stockpiling for a later and that's very smart.
But when it comes to wolves, because it is a
violent event, then they get the short end of the stick.
So that one more thing I want to talk about.
We're talking about sort of wolves in their natural habitat,
doing what comes naturally to them. Often when I was
(16:17):
going through your book and other places, I've spotted wolves
in medieval text they're often by themselves, and this is
really not how they live. So is that something that
you've noticed as why they're not really often talked about
as a pack? What do you see when you're looking
at wolves?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I think that is true in almost all of the
medieval early medieval literature that I can think of. Yeah,
you're absolutely right, they're always lone wolves. It's just occurred
to me. Now, I wonder if that's based in a
lived reality, in that you only really get lone wolves
when so a wolf pack is a family, So you
(16:54):
have the male and the female, they breed, they have
a litter of pups. Sometimes the pups will stay with
the pack and other times, when they get to about
a year old, they will disperse from the pack and
become a lone wolf in search of another lone wolf
to mate with and start their own pack. And because
those kinds of wolves are moving through the landscape a lot,
(17:15):
I wonder if people are encountering them more frequently because
of that. I also think it's potentially because of another
association of wolves kind of across early medieval Europe, not
just in England, but they're associated with outlaws, and outlaws
are these people who are bereft of community. They are
(17:37):
people who have committed some kind of a crime, done
something wrong, They've kind of acted in an animalistic way,
and therefore they are cast out of the community to
go and live in the woods, kind of stereotypically as
an outcast, as a wolfish person who has been excommunicated
in a way. Probably that association is responsible for the
(18:01):
fact that lone wolves often appear much more frequently than pakstu,
despite the fact that the reality is that wolves live
in packs. They need the pack to survive well.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And I think perhaps one of the other lived experiences
is if you're going to see one, you usually only
see one. From what we know today, you usually see
only one and not the whole pack. And so maybe
this has lived the experience as well. But the one
I do want to come back to outlaws because this
is so important. But the one other place where peoples
tend to regularly see wolves, they say it's on the battlefield.
(18:35):
So tell us about wolves association with battle because one
of the scholars in your book, I think it's Mohammed
Eric Rum and Lazy suggests that wolves actually may have
learned to associate armed men with food, which is such
a big state. It's like Pavlovian, so tell us about
wolves and battle.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, so this is probably one of the most well
studied types of wolf in Old English literature. They often
appear in the context of poems about battle, and they'll
either appear before a battle has begun as kind of
a herald of doom, almost as in they are waiting
(19:15):
for the bloodshed and the slaughter so that they can
take advantage of this glot of corpses that is going
to result from this battle, or they will appear at
the end of the battle to take advantage. So this
is what's called the beast of battle topos. It occurs
in lots and lots of Old English but also Old
Norse and Old Welsh poems, so it's a very common association.
(19:39):
And they also often appear with two other beasts of battle,
which is the raven and the eagle. So if you
see a raven and a wolf together in a poem,
sometimes you get combinations of the different animals. But if
you see those one of those combinations of animals together,
it's hinting at that same asociation that there's going to
(20:01):
be bloodshed and these scavenging animals are going to appear
to take advantage of that. And yeah, I think it's
really interesting that that is quite possibly based in this
reality of what people experience, and it's something that still
did happen in some places after the bloodshed of battles
of World War Two. It's certainly something that they do,
(20:23):
and again it's I think it's something that fills us
as humans with this visceral horror, but at the end
of the day, it is kind of a natural behavior
for them. If there's easy prey, they aren't going to
distinguish between a human or a deer or a bear
cub or any number of animals. I love this idea
(20:44):
that they see these armies on the move and they
make that association. They think, ah, I'm going to follow them,
because that's why the food is going to be. It's
also interesting in terms of that connection with ravens, because
there seems to be even today a kind of symbiotic
relationship between wolves and ravens. So wolves will follow ravens,
(21:05):
or it's kind of theorized that they will follow follow
ravens because ravens will lead them to potential prey. Whether
that's a wounded deer or something like that, so that
they can take the animal down and then the ravens
will come in and feast with the wolves. I do
think it did happen, but probably I would imagine kind
(21:26):
of took on a life of its own because it
is such a visceral, gory image. And also I think
it's a really effective way, poetic way of signaling that
something big is about to happen. You know, the wolves
start howling and the ravens start circling, and the eagles
start screeching, and you know, is a way to build
(21:47):
up that anticipation. And then equally, at the end of
the battle, it's a way to kind of show how
much bloodshed there has been. And whether that is to
glorify the victors of the battle or whether it's to
commiserate that they have lost so many men if they
are the losers of the battle.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yes, And it makes complete sense for this to work
in ten and with these images of it being like
the devil as well, because when there's death, there's someone
coming over to steal your souls. So these associations I
think are so important, so I did not want to
leave them behind. So we have associations of wolves being
things that live in the forest. They're savage, maybe devil like,
(22:28):
they're sneaky. So then we see wolves appearing in all
the English as a language. So where do we see
wolves appearing within a language.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
There's one word for wolf in all English, which is wolf,
but with a U rather than an oath, so very
very simple. What's more complicated is the fact that there
is a word for outcasts, wayarg, which might sound familiar
because it's the word that Tolkien borrowed from for his
(22:58):
Walks that the x Rider, Lord of the Rings, and
it's kind of it's a very complicated issue because there's
an Old Norse cognate vaga, which did mean both outcast
and wolf, but there's there's no solid evidence from the
corpus of Old English literature that the Old English word
wayarc did mean both. But having said that, there are
(23:21):
instances where maybe a wolf like creature is called a
waarch or the word is kind of used to describe
a person who is a kind of wolfish outcast or
somebody who behaves wolfishly. And this is one of the
issues that I go into in the book trying to
work out if there is this dual meaning, which there isn't.
(23:41):
But there's this association I think, between wolves and the
wayarc because of this complex interplay of wolves as outcasts
and outcasts as wolves.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Right, So there are associations between wolves and outlaws in
that they are they're living outside their exiled no one
really wants to have them around. And this also comes
up in places where you have outlaws being wolf's heads,
I think, and then Gallows I think you were talking
about like wolf's head tree type thing. So tell us
about how these things work together, because I think wolfshead,
(24:16):
for example, is something that's very confused over time. When
people talk about it, you'll call it outlaw wolf's head.
What did you discover when you were looking at these
things together?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, so there is I think it's a twelfth century
law that purports to be from an earlier time, but
there's kind of not much evidence that it actually was.
In the context of the Normans trying to like legitimize
their rule by saying, oh, our laws aren't our laws,
we borrowed them from the Saxons that came before us.
But in one of these twelfth century laws, the outlaw
(24:48):
is described as a wolf's head. So I think it's
a person who breaks the peace of the church or
something along those lines, and if he flees rather than
facing up to his crime, he is then proclaimed a
wolf's head because he has almost outcast himself by running away.
There's no evidence that this term wolf's head did appear
(25:08):
in Saxon laws. But having said that, in one of
the old English riddles, there's a compound word that kind
of translates to wolf's head tree, which seems to be
referring to the gallows. So there's this kind of hint
that possibly there is this association between the wolf's head
and the outlaw. But I mean, whether we've lost texts
(25:30):
that would have shed more light on that or not,
I don't know. But yeah, certainly there are these really
tantalizing hints of this relationship between the wolf and the
wolf's head and the outcast.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
So we see in language then places where being a
wolf is a bad thing, but then we also see
it where it's being a good thing. So where do
you see moments where people are described as wolves and
it's not an insult?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, So, particularly in pre Christian contexts, because by the
time you get this association with the devil and the wolf.
It's never a good thing to be called the wolf.
But previous to that, in these quote pagan societies, being
wolf like, particularly if you are a warrior, isn't a
bad thing because you're channeling kind of an inner wolf
(26:22):
and in a wolfishness to defeat your enemies in battle.
So that comes along with positive associations like being ferocious
or being loyal. There's a wolfish equivalent of the old
Norse berserka, where we get the phrase going berserk from.
So if you go berserk, you are filled with this
(26:43):
battle rage. And it's thought that these warriors called berserkers
wore bear skins into battle and they kind of embodied
the bears, ferocity, the best strength, all of that kind
of stuff. And there's this equivalent the ulf hethna, and
my pronunciation is probably terrible, but yeah, they are kind
of this equivalent in that they wear wolf skins, so
(27:05):
they're very deliberately using that image of the wolf, channeling
that in a wolf. And also, if you're a warrior
who creates lots of corpses, that's a positive thing because
they feed wolves. So if you are a feeder of wolves,
that means you're a really, really great warrior. So in
terms of that, yeah, the wolf is absolutely seen in
a positive light as long as it's within that kind
(27:28):
of battle context. Because even in Old Morle's poetry, you
still have this idea of a wolf as an outcast.
So it's all about you can be wolfish, but if
you use it for the right end.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
I mean, that's so true about so many animal images
from the Middle Ages, isn't it. So when we think
about wolves and we think about Old English, there's only
one place to go. I mean, you have so many
other things in the bug, but in the interest of time,
there's only one place to go, and of course that
is Bowlf. So the more you dug into wolves in Boove, well,
the deeper you are interesting at guys, I tell us
(28:01):
about looking into Beowulf from this perspective, what did you see?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, So Beowulf is a really interesting one because there's
this online joke where people say, oh, there's no wolves
in Beowulf, which is true. But in Beowulf we have
the hero Beowulf, and we have the monsters, which are
Grendel and Grendel's mother, and they live in a mirror
that is described as being surrounded by wolf slopes, so
(28:29):
there's that landscape association with wolves that they live in. Also,
Grendel's mother is referred to as a sea wolf, and
both of them are referred to with that kind of
contentious word wayarc that may have that wolfish association. So
you have these pints of wolfish. I'm not saying that
(28:49):
the Grendelken are actually wolves, but they're perceived or described
as being sort of wolf like. And then on the
other hand, you have Beowulf, who embodies everything that is
good about wolves. So he's loyal, he's a good leader,
he's really strong, and he uses that wolfishness to defeat
(29:10):
the Grendelkin, so he almost goes into that berserker like,
wolf like state of mind, but he's using it for
a good thing, because he's saving a community from these
monsters that are depredating on them. A kind of added
layer of complexity was that I was reading the poem
through the lens of both the wolf as outlaws. So
(29:31):
the Grendelkin are these wolfish outlaws, not just as monsters
that are kind of outlawed from humanity as a whole,
because they're said to be descended from Cain, but they've
become monstrous because of that, so they're outcasts from humanity,
and they're also outcasts from God because they're associated with
the devil. So there's that kind of lens, and there's
also the lens of the Grendelkin as speech stealers, as
(29:55):
this wolfish speech deealer, because they they sneak, like you
were saying, wolves are sneaky. They sneak into the whole
at herot every night, and they kill different people, and
it gets to the point where so many people have
been killed they've been silenced that the community as a
whole has stopped singing songs and has stopped celebrating as
(30:17):
they usually would in this communal activity in the hall.
So I argue in the book that perhaps the poet
is drawing on this association of wolves as speech dealers,
and then Beowulf himself has to come in as a
wolf and steal the speech of the gren look, And
it's kind of a complicated thing, And I think I
think that's one of the wonderful things about Beoulf as
(30:39):
a poem and why it's generated so many ideas and
so much scholarship, is that it's got so many things.
It's such a complicated poem, not just because it's long,
but because it's influenced by so many different traditions and
different ideas and everything. And yeah, I like to think
that the poet was influenced by all of this wolf
flaw that had come from such different places, but had
(31:02):
brought it together to make this one fantastic poem.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yes, well, it's got so many good cannings in it
as well, which is one of the things that I
love about it. So kenning has been people combining words
to make a new word a good one, like a
sea wolf to describe Grendel's mother, for example. And you
jump right in there because Beowulf's name means like the
wolf of the bees, And you're like, is this about
bears or wolves? You went there? So what makes you
(31:29):
think that this might be more about wolves than bears?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
That's a good question. So yeah, The traditional or most
widely accepted interpretation of Beowolf's name is that it's a
kenning of two elements, so BeO meaning bee and wolf
meaning wolf. So the kenning put together is wolf of
the bees, which is then interpreted as meaning bear. I
(31:54):
think that is certainly a valid interpretation, but based on
kind of all of the wolf law that seems to
have influenced the poet, and particularly there is an old
nurse poem about Sigmund, and it's generally thought that the
poet knew about this story of Sigmund because Beowulf is
(32:15):
compared to Sigmund in the poem. And in this story,
Sigmund's brothers are captured by an enemy king and they're
locked in some stocks, and then each night a female
where wolf comes and kills each of them. His sister
finally comes up with a way to save Sigmund, and
she brings some honey which she smears onto Sigmund's mouth,
(32:39):
so that when the wolf comes that night, he's the
final brother left. The wolf comes and instead of immediately
devouring him, she starts licking the honey off his face.
So it's been suggested that that is kind of a
reason behind this be wolf name. And I think it's
a valid interpretation.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Well, I mean, I did put you on the spot
there because this is a poem that has so much
not controversy necessarily, although there's that as well, but so
much discussion about what everything means in it. And I
think it's fair to keep having these discussions because it
seems as if the poet definitely thought very carefully about
(33:20):
all of the elements, and they're including the name of
the hero, and of course we can't even tell if
this is his invention or not. So I'm not asking you,
definitely not ask you to solve this in one podcast episode,
but we are coming to the end of our time.
So having looked at wolves and old English poetry and
(33:40):
all the places that they appear, would you like people
to think about when they encounter wolves, when they're looking
at any medieval literature, but especially the stuff from England,
what is something that you'd like people to look for
or look at when they see wolves appearing.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I think I would encourage people to not look at
wolves as these one dimensional, stereotypical, bloodthirsty, ravenous beasts, because
you know, there is literature that frames them in that way,
but there is also literature that frames them in a
positive way, or in a more ambivalent way, or even
(34:18):
I think, from my perspective, in a sympathetic way. I
think there were definitely people in early medieval England who,
just as today you know, wolves is such a divisive animal.
Some people love them, some people hate them, And I
think it's reductive to say that everybody in medieval England
(34:38):
hated wolves because they were a threat to their livelihoods
or whatever. I think there were certainly people who were,
perhaps not in the majority, but I think there were
definitely people who were more sympathetic to the plight of
wolves because they're this animal that is so heavily persecuted.
And just as it's reductive to say that all wolves
are bloodthirsty creatures, I think it's reductive to say that
(35:01):
all people in early medieval England had the same reaction
to wolves. I think it's definitely not out with the
realms of possibility that somebody might see a dead wolf
that had been hunted or trapped and feel sorrow for
that animal, particularly before Christianity really really takes hold. So yeah,
I think that's one thing to really bear in mind.
(35:24):
That it's a very complex issue, and it's not just
one of wolves are bad wolves, evil wolves are the
Devil's much more nuanced than we necessarily often give the
writers of these texts credit for.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I think that is a great way to put it.
We need to give the writers more credit because they
knew what they were doing as they were writing. I
think you've said it all in that one sentence. Thank
you so much to Elizabeth for being here and telling
us all about wolves in Old English literature.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
To find out more about Elizabeth's work, you can visit
her website at words on wolves dot co dot uk.
The book we discussed today is Wolves in Beowulf and
Other Old English Texts. Before we go, here's Peter from
Medievalist dot net to tell us what's on the website.
What's going on, Peter, Hey, So.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Some academic research that I've been waiting for for over
forty years has just.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Come out forty years.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
I'm very excited about it. I made sure he went
up at Medievalist dot net basically writing. In the latest
volume of Studies in Medievalism, Scott Manning is examining how
the Arthurian legend and got recreated in the nineteen eighty
four film transforms the movie.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Oh my gosh, this is what you've been waiting for
for forty years.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Indeed, indeed, I think this is a stunning piece of work.
So the concept is it was kind of really deliberately
put out there, but the scriptwriter or the movie, David
Freeman has the young autobot hot Rod having his own
Arthurian moment. He claims, the matrix of leadership is truly profound.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Well, I'm just laughing because I think what people don't
know about you is that you go to YouTube and
watch episodes about episodes of Transformers like you are a
super fan. And that's why I'm laughing about it.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I have a small collection. The Transformers came out at
the very right time for me in the mid eighties,
crucial moments my upbringing. So I think it's very important
that all medievals know about this.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Okay, so people will have to go and check it out,
the crucial link between Transformers and King Arthur.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Indeed, it's more than meets DII.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yes, I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
So we have that. Plus we have Zoet Siami on
how baptism shaped identity in medieval Europe. And Steve Tibble
has another piece, this one on the templars and assassins
having a pretty toxic landlord tenant relationship in Lebanon.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
There you go for all the people who are interested
in learning about toxic landlords from back in the day.
Steve's goottas cover.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Indeed, indeed so all that and much much more on
medievalist dot net.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well, thanks Peter for stopping by and letting us know.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
It's Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, so it's my pleasure to
take a moment to express my deep gratitude to all
of you for being here each week, supporting independent history
and yours truly, whether you're sharing your favorite episodes, letting
the ads play, or becoming patrons on Patreon, you are
very appreciated because it's all the little things you do
(38:32):
that makes this work possible. To find out more or
to become a patron, please visit patreon dot com slash
medievalists for everything from old English wolves to Werewolvesfollowmidievalist dot
net on Instagram at medievalist net or blue sky at Medievalists.
You can find me Danielle Sabalski across social media at
(38:53):
five min Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you can
find my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our music
is by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and have yourself
an amazing day,
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred and ten
of the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host Danielle Sebalski. In
the dark forests of the medieval world and the modern
(00:23):
stories we tell about it, lurks a powerful, beautiful predator,
sometimes big and bad, sometimes a figure of admiration. The
medieval wolf was such a big part of early English
culture that it found its way not just into stories,
but into the language itself. This week I spoke with
doctor Elizabeth Marshall about wolves in Old English. Elizabeth is
(00:47):
an independent scholar and the author of Wolves in Beowulf
and other Old English texts and the forthcoming Wolf Land
The Lost Wolves of Landscape and Lore, as well as
various academic and public articles on wolves. Our conversation on
where we find wolves and medieval sources, how early English
writers saw them, and how wolves both add to and
(01:10):
steal language itself is coming up right after this. Well,
thank you Elizabeth for joining us to talk about wolves
and Old English. These are both super interesting topics, so
it's great to have you here to talk about both. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So I have to ask you, when we're looking at
wolves in early England, how do we find out anything
about them, like where they are, what they're doing, how
do we find this stuff out?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
So the majority of what we know about wolves comes
kind of filtered through the human lens, through the cultural
artifacts that survive, so primarily literature, some art, some stone work.
There's also kind of hints of more real wolves in
the landscape in place names. There's a really great study
(02:02):
about looking at all of the different wolf place names
throughout England and Scotland and Wales as well, and it
shows you both the types of landscapes that wolves are
kind of associated in these toponyms, but also where the
populations are kind of concentrated, assuming that places are named
for wolves because they have kind of an abundance of wolves.
(02:24):
So this kind of leads to a theory that by
ten sixty six, because there's much fewer wolf place names
in the south, this suggests that wolves have started to
move further northwards because they're being persecuted. The habitat is
not suitable for them anymore, so they're moving further and
further north towards less populated areas and areas that they
(02:47):
are more sheltered from people. There is some archaeological evidence.
You get things like wolf teeth showing up as grave
goods in early graves, but generally speaking, we don't tend
to have very many archaeological records at all, largely because
wolves weren't considered a very useful animal. Their fur is
(03:10):
kind of considered not great in comparison to the fur
of things like stoats or ermine, you know, these really
kind of rich, luxurious furs. There's some evidence of a
modest trade in wolf fairs, but they're generally considered smelly
and not really worth having. They're not eaten. It's considered
a taboo to eat wolves from a Christian perspective, because
(03:32):
they might have eaten a human. There's this perception that
they might have him taken in the flesh of a human,
and then it kind of becomes this issue of cannibalism
or almost if the person eats wolf flesh, so that's
this taboo, and their body parts do show up in
more medicinal or kind of magico medicinal contexts, but generally speaking,
(03:56):
they're not really considered a very useful animal. So if
they're being hunted or being app it's primarily to get
rid of them. Because they're a threat to sheep and
other livestock.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
We were talking briefly about habitat just now, where are
these wolves living, because when we picture the UK today,
there aren't that many forests, like deep forests, but this
is a different landscape back in the day, right.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, So there is a perception that medieval England, particularly
what we think of as dark Age England, which is
a whole problem in itself, but there's this idea that
dark Age England is a place where a peasant will
be traveling through very deep forest and they might be
set upon by wolves or thieves or robbers or what
have you. But actually woodland has very slowly but surely
(04:45):
been in decline for a very very long time, well
beyond the beginning of the Middle Ages, much further back.
So although we do have a lot less woodland today,
it's been a gradual movement towards that point, rather than
a more sudden departure, as it were. There's this kind
of association between wolves and wilderness, so I think it's
(05:05):
one that we have today. It's a very fairy tale,
kind of Gothic image that we have of wolves stalking
through woodland, hunting little girls in red cloaks, But actually
they're not primarily confined to woodlands, particularly because woodland isn't
this kind of wilderness area that we tend to think
(05:27):
of it as. It's a landscape that is exploited quite
heavily for all the resources that it produces. So you
do get wolves or this theory that wolves are living
in the more dense areas of forests, but they're certainly
not confined to those landscapes, so you might find them
in more upland mountainous areas. Or the fens are another
(05:50):
place where it's considered a good habitat for wolves because
it's got abundant wildlife that they can prey on. Maybe
not the kind of wildlife that we tend to think
of the meeting like deer, but you know, they can
survive on fish, they can survive on birds, marine life.
They do very very well in those areas. The only
things that wolves need to survive are prey and shelter
(06:12):
and ideally not persecution from humans. And that's why the
fens are a really good place for them, because fens
are very difficult for people to traverse, especially before areas
of them have been reclaimed and drained so that they
can be built on. So yeah, it's thought that fens
were a fruitful place for wolves be and that's also
(06:32):
reflected in the place name evidence as well. There's hints
of places that are kind of marshy, swampy areas being
associated with wolves, particularly in East Anglia, which has a
very rich wolf tradition, and it's possibly because East Anglia
is an area of England that has lots of finland.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Well. I wanted to get into this because I think
that you're right. People imagine that you're always wondering in
a wood and you're going to be set upon wolves
and it's going to be very scary. I mean, Canada
is much bigger than the UK, but you almost never
see wolves out in the wilderness. They just disappear. They
melt into the landscape really really quickly. But you did
find a charm, which I thought was interesting because this
(07:15):
is going to be a rare occurrence that you'd see
one at all. There is a charm that you found
that involved like, if you have the hair of some
wolves with you, then you're gonna be okay, they're not
going to attack you in the woods. And I was
thinking like this is an unlikely event, but maybe it's
like flying on airplanes, right, It's unlikely, but people still
do superstitious things to keep them safe on an airplane, right, Yeah,
(07:37):
for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And I think it's one of those things where even
today from you know, when we live in an age
where we're very cognizant of the fact that wolves actually
pose very very little danger to us, but I think
it's very rare to come across a person who doesn't
have kind of a little inkling of fear of wolves
(07:58):
just in the back of their minds. And I think
it's kind of the same in early medieval England. You know,
there's a chance that you'll come across a wolf, sure,
but they're almost certainly going to run away from you
before you even know that they were there. They have
an incredible sense of smell, So if humans are coming
into their territory, most likely they're going to be vacating
(08:19):
that territory asap because they don't want anything to do
with humans. So yeah, I think things like the charm are,
like you say, kind of like a just in case thing.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, I think that maybe one of the things that
you're getting at here is that when people think they're
going to come across a wolf. They're not necessarily afraid
they're going to be eaten, but they might be afraid
that their speech is going to be taken from them.
So tell us a little bit about this.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, this was something I was very surprised to learn
about when I was in the research for the book.
So there's this superstition. It begins in the classical world.
There's some evidence that I might have known about it,
but certainly it's known by Virgil, It's known by Theocritus,
a Greek poet. It's known by Pliny, it's known by Ambrose,
(09:08):
it's known by Isidor. It kind of travels all the
way through the classical period until it gets down to
early medieval Europe and to England specifically. So there's this
superstition that if a wolf sees you before you see
the wolf, and I always get that mixed up. It's
a very difficult sentence to say, if a wolf sees
(09:29):
you before you see the wolf, you'll lose your speech,
You'll be struck dumb.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, it's interesting in something that you get at in
the book, where I feel like, when we see one,
it's so spectacular and as you say, they kind of
make the hair stin up on the back of your neck.
When we see one, we are struck dumb because this
is something that you have to sort of look at
and think about it. Am I in danger? But also
they're so beautiful that you are struck dumb. But this
is interesting where if the wolf sees you first, then
(09:57):
you might not be able to speak. It is very
interesting and it leads to a little phrase that people
will throw around in their speech sometimes, which is the
wolf in the story. And I love this. So when
do people say the wolf in the story?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So the wolf in the story is it's a saying
that's kind of idiomatically equivalent to how we use the
phrase speak of the devil. So if you're talking about somebody,
and maybe you're not necessarily saying something very nice about
a person and they come into the room, you stop talking, right,
your speech has been stolen by the appearance of that person.
(10:31):
So that person becomes like the wolf in the story,
that the wolf in the story that you have just
been talking about. They are the subject of your conversation
and you abruptly stop talking when they come in. So yeah,
very similar to the way we say, speak of the devil.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Now, I love that and I would love to bring
that back, but I think it will be like just
among the people who have read your bug of listened
to this podcast, but we can start to make this
catch on, right sure.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, Well, in I think in fred they do still
use wolf rather than devil in that phrase, so I think,
and I think there are some other languages as well.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but yeah,
it's it's something that's died out in English, but I
think there's scope for bringing it back based on the
fact that it's survived in these other languages as well.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, let's start that. Well, you were talking about the devil,
so let's go there for a minute. The wolf is
having associated with the devil, I think, probably for reasons
that might be obvious to us. But tell us why
the world is associated with the devil.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
It stems back to the New Testament of the Bible,
and it's considered to be based in the reality of
the people who are writing down the New Testament, in
that they are a pastoral society and they are kind
of living in fear of their livestock, which are obviously
very important to their livelihood of their livestock being eaten
(11:56):
or taken or sorted by wolves. So that becomes a
very fruitful metaphor in the New Testament for the devil
who is preying on human souls, and particularly in the
context of Christians being metaphorrized as sheep and Christ being
the lamb of God. Yeah, very very fruitful metaphor and
(12:17):
one that I think has an immediacy, particularly in the
early medieval world when sheep farming is so and becoming
ever more important to the medieval economy. It's a very
real and visceral image that probably contributed to people's ideas
of what the devil was and what the devil was
capable of doing, because if you saw a sheep that
(12:38):
had been slaughtered by a wolf, you might make the
connection of that's what the devil will do to my
soul if I don't stay faithful to Christ and to God.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, I think that one of the key parts of this.
I mean, there's the violence of it, the suddenness, but
also the stealth, which is something that I think we'll
get to when we get to more about language in wolves.
But when it comes to this being the devil, this
is a sneaky attack that you don't see coming, you
may not see until after when it's carnage. And I
(13:09):
think that that is an aspect of wolves that maybe
is a bit different than when we think about other
predators in nature. Something that is sort of associated is
their sneakiness, their stealth, perhaps more stealth than I'm thinking about,
Like what's the difference between wolves and foxes? And it's
like more stealth when it comes to wolves, I think,
than slyness, which is more fox like. Would you say
(13:30):
that that is a fair assessment.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, I think that's true. And you've reminded me of
some manuscript images. Quite a common image is a wolf
looking very kind of low to the ground, stealthily stalking
towards a pen of sheep that look a bit terrified.
The other interesting thing about the way wolves operate is
that they sometimes do what is known as surplus killing.
(13:57):
I don't know if it's a behavior that is unique
to wolf, but it's certainly one that wolves are well
known for, in that they will if they find a
source of prey that is both abundant and ripe for
the taking. It could be a herd of deer that
are trapped in heavy snow, or it could be a
flock of sheep that have nowhere to go to escape
(14:17):
from They will just kill all of those animals, and
people kind of take that as evidence for the wolf's
bloodthirstiness and they're kind of thirst for violence and their
inability to stop themselves from slaughtering everything that they see.
But it's actually just one of those very natural behaviors, right.
It's an animal that is programmed to kill because they're
(14:40):
actually very unsuccessful at hunting, which I always think is
quite funny. Wolf hunts. I think less than twenty percent,
maybe even less than ten percent of the time are
actually successful because there's loads of different factors. You know,
deer can outrun them, or dick can stand their ground,
they can seriously injure walls with their legs or their antlers.
So when wolves are presented with this opportunity lots and
(15:03):
lots of prey that are, like I say, right for
the taking, they will take them. But they will come
back to that food source, they'll bury some parts to
eat them later, or they'll keep returning to the kill
site over and over. So yeah, I think there is
that element of stealthiness for sure, and that's again one
of those things that is very good for a metaphorical
(15:24):
devil connection, right, because the devil is sneaky and comes
at you when you're least expecting it. If your faith
waivers even a little bit, the devil can sneak right
in there to prey on your soul. But yeah, there's
also this element of just carnage I think the wolves
are associated with, and it's kind of an unfortunate thing
that it is based in reality, but it's morphed into
(15:45):
this thing that is an excuse for people to persecute
wolves a lot of the time because they think of
them as such a bloodthirsty and vicious animal.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Well, I mean, it's a little bit unfair because if
this was any other creature, they'd say, this is a
fish and it's stockpiling for a later and that's very smart.
But when it comes to wolves, because it is a
violent event, then they get the short end of the stick.
So that one more thing I want to talk about.
We're talking about sort of wolves in their natural habitat,
doing what comes naturally to them. Often when I was
(16:17):
going through your book and other places, I've spotted wolves
in medieval text they're often by themselves, and this is
really not how they live. So is that something that
you've noticed as why they're not really often talked about
as a pack? What do you see when you're looking
at wolves?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I think that is true in almost all of the
medieval early medieval literature that I can think of. Yeah,
you're absolutely right, they're always lone wolves. It's just occurred
to me. Now, I wonder if that's based in a
lived reality, in that you only really get lone wolves
when so a wolf pack is a family, So you
(16:54):
have the male and the female, they breed, they have
a litter of pups. Sometimes the pups will stay with
the pack and other times, when they get to about
a year old, they will disperse from the pack and
become a lone wolf in search of another lone wolf
to mate with and start their own pack. And because
those kinds of wolves are moving through the landscape a lot,
(17:15):
I wonder if people are encountering them more frequently because
of that. I also think it's potentially because of another
association of wolves kind of across early medieval Europe, not
just in England, but they're associated with outlaws, and outlaws
are these people who are bereft of community. They are
(17:37):
people who have committed some kind of a crime, done
something wrong, They've kind of acted in an animalistic way,
and therefore they are cast out of the community to
go and live in the woods, kind of stereotypically as
an outcast, as a wolfish person who has been excommunicated
in a way. Probably that association is responsible for the
(18:01):
fact that lone wolves often appear much more frequently than pakstu,
despite the fact that the reality is that wolves live
in packs. They need the pack to survive well.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And I think perhaps one of the other lived experiences
is if you're going to see one, you usually only
see one. From what we know today, you usually see
only one and not the whole pack. And so maybe
this has lived the experience as well. But the one
I do want to come back to outlaws because this
is so important. But the one other place where peoples
tend to regularly see wolves, they say it's on the battlefield.
(18:35):
So tell us about wolves association with battle because one
of the scholars in your book, I think it's Mohammed
Eric Rum and Lazy suggests that wolves actually may have
learned to associate armed men with food, which is such
a big state. It's like Pavlovian, so tell us about
wolves and battle.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, so this is probably one of the most well
studied types of wolf in Old English literature. They often
appear in the context of poems about battle, and they'll
either appear before a battle has begun as kind of
a herald of doom, almost as in they are waiting
(19:15):
for the bloodshed and the slaughter so that they can
take advantage of this glot of corpses that is going
to result from this battle, or they will appear at
the end of the battle to take advantage. So this
is what's called the beast of battle topos. It occurs
in lots and lots of Old English but also Old
Norse and Old Welsh poems, so it's a very common association.
(19:39):
And they also often appear with two other beasts of battle,
which is the raven and the eagle. So if you
see a raven and a wolf together in a poem,
sometimes you get combinations of the different animals. But if
you see those one of those combinations of animals together,
it's hinting at that same asociation that there's going to
(20:01):
be bloodshed and these scavenging animals are going to appear
to take advantage of that. And yeah, I think it's
really interesting that that is quite possibly based in this
reality of what people experience, and it's something that still
did happen in some places after the bloodshed of battles
of World War Two. It's certainly something that they do,
(20:23):
and again it's I think it's something that fills us
as humans with this visceral horror, but at the end
of the day, it is kind of a natural behavior
for them. If there's easy prey, they aren't going to
distinguish between a human or a deer or a bear
cub or any number of animals. I love this idea
(20:44):
that they see these armies on the move and they
make that association. They think, ah, I'm going to follow them,
because that's why the food is going to be. It's
also interesting in terms of that connection with ravens, because
there seems to be even today a kind of symbiotic
relationship between wolves and ravens. So wolves will follow ravens,
(21:05):
or it's kind of theorized that they will follow follow
ravens because ravens will lead them to potential prey. Whether
that's a wounded deer or something like that, so that
they can take the animal down and then the ravens
will come in and feast with the wolves. I do
think it did happen, but probably I would imagine kind
(21:26):
of took on a life of its own because it
is such a visceral, gory image. And also I think
it's a really effective way, poetic way of signaling that
something big is about to happen. You know, the wolves
start howling and the ravens start circling, and the eagles
start screeching, and you know, is a way to build
(21:47):
up that anticipation. And then equally, at the end of
the battle, it's a way to kind of show how
much bloodshed there has been. And whether that is to
glorify the victors of the battle or whether it's to
commiserate that they have lost so many men if they
are the losers of the battle.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yes, And it makes complete sense for this to work
in ten and with these images of it being like
the devil as well, because when there's death, there's someone
coming over to steal your souls. So these associations I
think are so important, so I did not want to
leave them behind. So we have associations of wolves being
things that live in the forest. They're savage, maybe devil like,
(22:28):
they're sneaky. So then we see wolves appearing in all
the English as a language. So where do we see
wolves appearing within a language.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
There's one word for wolf in all English, which is wolf,
but with a U rather than an oath, so very
very simple. What's more complicated is the fact that there
is a word for outcasts, wayarg, which might sound familiar
because it's the word that Tolkien borrowed from for his
(22:58):
Walks that the x Rider, Lord of the Rings, and
it's kind of it's a very complicated issue because there's
an Old Norse cognate vaga, which did mean both outcast
and wolf, but there's there's no solid evidence from the
corpus of Old English literature that the Old English word
wayarc did mean both. But having said that, there are
(23:21):
instances where maybe a wolf like creature is called a
waarch or the word is kind of used to describe
a person who is a kind of wolfish outcast or
somebody who behaves wolfishly. And this is one of the
issues that I go into in the book trying to
work out if there is this dual meaning, which there isn't.
(23:41):
But there's this association I think, between wolves and the
wayarc because of this complex interplay of wolves as outcasts
and outcasts as wolves.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Right, So there are associations between wolves and outlaws in
that they are they're living outside their exiled no one
really wants to have them around. And this also comes
up in places where you have outlaws being wolf's heads,
I think, and then Gallows I think you were talking
about like wolf's head tree type thing. So tell us
about how these things work together, because I think wolfshead,
(24:16):
for example, is something that's very confused over time. When
people talk about it, you'll call it outlaw wolf's head.
What did you discover when you were looking at these
things together?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, so there is I think it's a twelfth century
law that purports to be from an earlier time, but
there's kind of not much evidence that it actually was.
In the context of the Normans trying to like legitimize
their rule by saying, oh, our laws aren't our laws,
we borrowed them from the Saxons that came before us.
But in one of these twelfth century laws, the outlaw
(24:48):
is described as a wolf's head. So I think it's
a person who breaks the peace of the church or
something along those lines, and if he flees rather than
facing up to his crime, he is then proclaimed a
wolf's head because he has almost outcast himself by running away.
There's no evidence that this term wolf's head did appear
(25:08):
in Saxon laws. But having said that, in one of
the old English riddles, there's a compound word that kind
of translates to wolf's head tree, which seems to be
referring to the gallows. So there's this kind of hint
that possibly there is this association between the wolf's head
and the outlaw. But I mean, whether we've lost texts
(25:30):
that would have shed more light on that or not,
I don't know. But yeah, certainly there are these really
tantalizing hints of this relationship between the wolf and the
wolf's head and the outcast.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
So we see in language then places where being a
wolf is a bad thing, but then we also see
it where it's being a good thing. So where do
you see moments where people are described as wolves and
it's not an insult?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, So, particularly in pre Christian contexts, because by the
time you get this association with the devil and the wolf.
It's never a good thing to be called the wolf.
But previous to that, in these quote pagan societies, being
wolf like, particularly if you are a warrior, isn't a
bad thing because you're channeling kind of an inner wolf
(26:22):
and in a wolfishness to defeat your enemies in battle.
So that comes along with positive associations like being ferocious
or being loyal. There's a wolfish equivalent of the old
Norse berserka, where we get the phrase going berserk from.
So if you go berserk, you are filled with this
(26:43):
battle rage. And it's thought that these warriors called berserkers
wore bear skins into battle and they kind of embodied
the bears, ferocity, the best strength, all of that kind
of stuff. And there's this equivalent the ulf hethna, and
my pronunciation is probably terrible, but yeah, they are kind
of this equivalent in that they wear wolf skins, so
(27:05):
they're very deliberately using that image of the wolf, channeling
that in a wolf. And also, if you're a warrior
who creates lots of corpses, that's a positive thing because
they feed wolves. So if you are a feeder of wolves,
that means you're a really, really great warrior. So in
terms of that, yeah, the wolf is absolutely seen in
a positive light as long as it's within that kind
(27:28):
of battle context. Because even in Old Morle's poetry, you
still have this idea of a wolf as an outcast.
So it's all about you can be wolfish, but if
you use it for the right end.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
I mean, that's so true about so many animal images
from the Middle Ages, isn't it. So when we think
about wolves and we think about Old English, there's only
one place to go. I mean, you have so many
other things in the bug, but in the interest of time,
there's only one place to go, and of course that
is Bowlf. So the more you dug into wolves in Boove, well,
the deeper you are interesting at guys, I tell us
(28:01):
about looking into Beowulf from this perspective, what did you see?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, So Beowulf is a really interesting one because there's
this online joke where people say, oh, there's no wolves
in Beowulf, which is true. But in Beowulf we have
the hero Beowulf, and we have the monsters, which are
Grendel and Grendel's mother, and they live in a mirror
that is described as being surrounded by wolf slopes, so
(28:29):
there's that landscape association with wolves that they live in. Also,
Grendel's mother is referred to as a sea wolf, and
both of them are referred to with that kind of
contentious word wayarc that may have that wolfish association. So
you have these pints of wolfish. I'm not saying that
(28:49):
the Grendelken are actually wolves, but they're perceived or described
as being sort of wolf like. And then on the
other hand, you have Beowulf, who embodies everything that is
good about wolves. So he's loyal, he's a good leader,
he's really strong, and he uses that wolfishness to defeat
(29:10):
the Grendelkin, so he almost goes into that berserker like,
wolf like state of mind, but he's using it for
a good thing, because he's saving a community from these
monsters that are depredating on them. A kind of added
layer of complexity was that I was reading the poem
through the lens of both the wolf as outlaws. So
(29:31):
the Grendelkin are these wolfish outlaws, not just as monsters
that are kind of outlawed from humanity as a whole,
because they're said to be descended from Cain, but they've
become monstrous because of that, so they're outcasts from humanity,
and they're also outcasts from God because they're associated with
the devil. So there's that kind of lens, and there's
also the lens of the Grendelkin as speech stealers, as
(29:55):
this wolfish speech deealer, because they they sneak, like you
were saying, wolves are sneaky. They sneak into the whole
at herot every night, and they kill different people, and
it gets to the point where so many people have
been killed they've been silenced that the community as a
whole has stopped singing songs and has stopped celebrating as
(30:17):
they usually would in this communal activity in the hall.
So I argue in the book that perhaps the poet
is drawing on this association of wolves as speech dealers,
and then Beowulf himself has to come in as a
wolf and steal the speech of the gren look, And
it's kind of a complicated thing, And I think I
think that's one of the wonderful things about Beoulf as
(30:39):
a poem and why it's generated so many ideas and
so much scholarship, is that it's got so many things.
It's such a complicated poem, not just because it's long,
but because it's influenced by so many different traditions and
different ideas and everything. And yeah, I like to think
that the poet was influenced by all of this wolf
flaw that had come from such different places, but had
(31:02):
brought it together to make this one fantastic poem.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yes, well, it's got so many good cannings in it
as well, which is one of the things that I
love about it. So kenning has been people combining words
to make a new word a good one, like a
sea wolf to describe Grendel's mother, for example. And you
jump right in there because Beowulf's name means like the
wolf of the bees, And you're like, is this about
bears or wolves? You went there? So what makes you
(31:29):
think that this might be more about wolves than bears?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
That's a good question. So yeah, The traditional or most
widely accepted interpretation of Beowolf's name is that it's a
kenning of two elements, so BeO meaning bee and wolf
meaning wolf. So the kenning put together is wolf of
the bees, which is then interpreted as meaning bear. I
(31:54):
think that is certainly a valid interpretation, but based on
kind of all of the wolf law that seems to
have influenced the poet, and particularly there is an old
nurse poem about Sigmund, and it's generally thought that the
poet knew about this story of Sigmund because Beowulf is
(32:15):
compared to Sigmund in the poem. And in this story,
Sigmund's brothers are captured by an enemy king and they're
locked in some stocks, and then each night a female
where wolf comes and kills each of them. His sister
finally comes up with a way to save Sigmund, and
she brings some honey which she smears onto Sigmund's mouth,
(32:39):
so that when the wolf comes that night, he's the
final brother left. The wolf comes and instead of immediately
devouring him, she starts licking the honey off his face.
So it's been suggested that that is kind of a
reason behind this be wolf name. And I think it's
a valid interpretation.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Well, I mean, I did put you on the spot
there because this is a poem that has so much
not controversy necessarily, although there's that as well, but so
much discussion about what everything means in it. And I
think it's fair to keep having these discussions because it
seems as if the poet definitely thought very carefully about
(33:20):
all of the elements, and they're including the name of
the hero, and of course we can't even tell if
this is his invention or not. So I'm not asking you,
definitely not ask you to solve this in one podcast episode,
but we are coming to the end of our time.
So having looked at wolves and old English poetry and
(33:40):
all the places that they appear, would you like people
to think about when they encounter wolves, when they're looking
at any medieval literature, but especially the stuff from England,
what is something that you'd like people to look for
or look at when they see wolves appearing.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I think I would encourage people to not look at
wolves as these one dimensional, stereotypical, bloodthirsty, ravenous beasts, because
you know, there is literature that frames them in that way,
but there is also literature that frames them in a
positive way, or in a more ambivalent way, or even
(34:18):
I think, from my perspective, in a sympathetic way. I
think there were definitely people in early medieval England who,
just as today you know, wolves is such a divisive animal.
Some people love them, some people hate them, And I
think it's reductive to say that everybody in medieval England
(34:38):
hated wolves because they were a threat to their livelihoods
or whatever. I think there were certainly people who were,
perhaps not in the majority, but I think there were
definitely people who were more sympathetic to the plight of
wolves because they're this animal that is so heavily persecuted.
And just as it's reductive to say that all wolves
are bloodthirsty creatures, I think it's reductive to say that
(35:01):
all people in early medieval England had the same reaction
to wolves. I think it's definitely not out with the
realms of possibility that somebody might see a dead wolf
that had been hunted or trapped and feel sorrow for
that animal, particularly before Christianity really really takes hold. So yeah,
I think that's one thing to really bear in mind.
(35:24):
That it's a very complex issue, and it's not just
one of wolves are bad wolves, evil wolves are the
Devil's much more nuanced than we necessarily often give the
writers of these texts credit for.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I think that is a great way to put it.
We need to give the writers more credit because they
knew what they were doing as they were writing. I
think you've said it all in that one sentence. Thank
you so much to Elizabeth for being here and telling
us all about wolves in Old English literature.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
To find out more about Elizabeth's work, you can visit
her website at words on wolves dot co dot uk.
The book we discussed today is Wolves in Beowulf and
Other Old English Texts. Before we go, here's Peter from
Medievalist dot net to tell us what's on the website.
What's going on, Peter, Hey, So.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Some academic research that I've been waiting for for over
forty years has just.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Come out forty years.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
I'm very excited about it. I made sure he went
up at Medievalist dot net basically writing. In the latest
volume of Studies in Medievalism, Scott Manning is examining how
the Arthurian legend and got recreated in the nineteen eighty
four film transforms the movie.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Oh my gosh, this is what you've been waiting for
for forty years.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Indeed, indeed, I think this is a stunning piece of work.
So the concept is it was kind of really deliberately
put out there, but the scriptwriter or the movie, David
Freeman has the young autobot hot Rod having his own
Arthurian moment. He claims, the matrix of leadership is truly profound.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Well, I'm just laughing because I think what people don't
know about you is that you go to YouTube and
watch episodes about episodes of Transformers like you are a
super fan. And that's why I'm laughing about it.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I have a small collection. The Transformers came out at
the very right time for me in the mid eighties,
crucial moments my upbringing. So I think it's very important
that all medievals know about this.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Okay, so people will have to go and check it out,
the crucial link between Transformers and King Arthur.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Indeed, it's more than meets DII.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yes, I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
So we have that. Plus we have Zoet Siami on
how baptism shaped identity in medieval Europe. And Steve Tibble
has another piece, this one on the templars and assassins
having a pretty toxic landlord tenant relationship in Lebanon.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
There you go for all the people who are interested
in learning about toxic landlords from back in the day.
Steve's goottas cover.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Indeed, indeed so all that and much much more on
medievalist dot net.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well, thanks Peter for stopping by and letting us know.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
It's Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, so it's my pleasure to
take a moment to express my deep gratitude to all
of you for being here each week, supporting independent history
and yours truly, whether you're sharing your favorite episodes, letting
the ads play, or becoming patrons on Patreon, you are
very appreciated because it's all the little things you do
(38:32):
that makes this work possible. To find out more or
to become a patron, please visit patreon dot com slash
medievalists for everything from old English wolves to Werewolvesfollowmidievalist dot
net on Instagram at medievalist net or blue sky at Medievalists.
You can find me Danielle Sabalski across social media at
(38:53):
five min Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you can
find my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our music
is by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and have yourself
an amazing day,
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