Wild Hunt- Germanic EventEvent"Furious Host"

The Priest on the Road

In 1091, near Bonneval, a young priest named Walchelin walked alone on a winter night and stumbled upon a vast procession of the dead. First came foot soldiers bearing plundered goods. Then mourning women riding sidesaddle on horses studded with burning nails. Then a company of clergy and monks in black. Walchelin recognized several recently deceased neighbors among the riders. He tried to seize a riderless black horse. A spirit seized his throat and burned his hand. He carried the scar for life. Orderic Vitalis recorded the account in his Historia Ecclesiastica.

The Peterborough Chronicle records another sighting, 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." Both accounts describe what Germanic tradition called the Wild Hunt: a spectral host of the dead tearing across the winter sky, led by a figure on horseback, trailed by baying hounds.

The Huntsman

Across Germanic-speaking regions, the leader of the Hunt bears names traceable to the chief god. "Wode" in Westphalia. "Gwôd" in parts of Switzerland. "Wod" in Mecklenburg. All point back to Wodan.

He rides at the head of the procession on an eight-legged horse, accompanied by wolves and ravens. The dead warriors ride behind him. In some traditions, Wodan appears not as a king but as a gaunt, one-eyed figure in a wide-brimmed hat and dark cloak. The warriors he selected from the battlefields form his retinue, along with the hounds: black dogs with burning eyes whose baying announces the Hunt's approach.

Holda and the Twelve Nights

In many German traditions, the Hunt is led not by Wodan but by a woman. Holda (Frau Holle) leads processions of women, children, and spirits through the winter nights of Hesse and Thuringia. Her train includes the souls of unbaptized children and women who died in childbirth. She inspects households to see whether the spinning has been finished before her arrival. Those who completed their work are rewarded. Those who did not find their distaffs tangled.

In the Alps, Perchta leads a similar procession through Bavaria, Austria, and South Tyrol. She enforced strict taboos during the Twelve Nights between Christmas and Epiphany, particularly the prohibition against spinning flax. In the most extreme tales, Perchta slit open the bellies of the disobedient and stuffed them with straw. Her retinue, the Perchten, still appear in Alpine carnival traditions wearing fearsome masks and clanging bells.

During the Twelve Nights, the boundary between the living and the dead was thinnest. No laundry was hung outside, lest the riders use the sheets as shrouds. No spinning was done. Doors and windows were closed against the passage of the dead. Food was left out for the riders.

Those Caught in the Open

People caught outside when the Hunt passed risked being swept among the riders and deposited far from home, sometimes on mountaintops, sometimes on church roofs. Others went mad from the sight. Hearing the horns alone could mark a person for death within the year.

But the Hunt could also bless. A person who threw themselves flat on the ground, face down, might find a piece of meat or a mysterious gift beside them by morning. Fields the Hunt passed over bore well the following year. If the Hunt threw down a piece of its quarry, often described as a human leg, the mortal who received it had to keep it until the Hunt returned the next year. Those who fulfilled the obligation found the grim trophy had turned to gold.