The Ulfhédnar

Continuing with my previous post about Berserkers and Ulfhéðnar, today I will talk about the later.

The Ulfhéðnar were warriors that alike the Berserkers fight in a frenzy state, but they were say to werewolf pelts instead of bear, the word Ulfhéðnar meaning “ Wolf hide” or “ Wolf head”.

Sometimes we see them in relation with Odhin as some kind of special elite warriors, and some other times they’re a bit intermingled with the Berserkers, for example in Eagil saga we have a Berserkers that is say to transform into a wolf, just like Bödvar transform into a bear in Saga of Hrólf Kraki, and this of course relate them with the werewolf myth too, after all one of the ways of becoming a werewolf is wearing a cursed wolf pelt.

But unlike the berserker we have just a few accounts about the Ulfhéðnar.

They are mentioned in the Vatnsdæla saga, the Haraldskvæði and the Grettis saga and in these they’re say to be Harald Fairhair warriors.

Beside those mentions we have some archeological representations, a helm-plate press from Torslunda depicting a wolf headed warrior with spear and sword and another in a scabbard carving in Gutenstein.

With so few accounts one can speculate that maybe these warriors emerged as Harald Fairhair berserkers, like he preferred them to be identified with the wolf rather than the bear, however the Ulfhéðnar are not the only example of “ wolf warriors” around the world, we actually have a lot of them from Norway and Germany to Mongolia, Turkey ( specially these last two ) to Rome, Alaska and North and Central America, a lot of culture’s have warrior somehow related to the wolf, quite often a group of young men living together away from the tribe or social group as some kind of coming of age rituals, but not exclusively as such.

So my tough is that the Ulfhéðnar are at least as old as the Berserkes though not that popular and much less documented.

Still there was another kind of warrior alike those two yet less documented, so much that its existence is just speculations and that is the “Wild Boar warrior” and I will talk about those in my next post