page_title: Werewolf
section_title: Indo-European comparative mythology
hierarchical_section_title: Werewolf / History / Indo-European comparative mythology
caption_attribution_description: English: An engraving of an image shown on a Vendel era bronze plate discovered in Öland, Sweden. Depicted are a berserker about to decapitate his enemy on the right and Oden on the left. Oden's famous characters markers are not present. Svenska: Bronsplåt med upphöjda bilder för pressning av tunt bronsbleck, vendeltid, Fyndplats: Öland. Eventuellt föreställer figuren till höger en bärsärk eller ulvhedin, figuren till vänster Oden. Deutsch: Umzeichnung eines Bronze-Pressbleches der Vendelzeit, Fundplatz: Öland, Schweden.
context_page_description: In folklore, a werewolf, or occasionally lycanthrope, is a human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon. Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy, are Petronius and Gervase of Tilbury.
  The werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore, existing in many variants, which are related by a common development of a Christian interpretation of underlying European folklore developed during the medieval period. From the early modern period, werewolf beliefs also spread to the New World with colonialism. Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in witches, in the course of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century.
context_section_description: The werewolf folklore found in Europe harks back to a common development during the Middle Ages, arising in the context of Christianisation, and the associated interpretation of pre-Christian mythology in Christian terms. Their underlying common origin can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European mythology, where lycanthropy is reconstructed as an aspect of the initiation of the warrior class. This is reflected in Iron Age Europe in the Tierkrieger depictions from the Germanic sphere, among others. The standard comparative overview of this aspect of Indo-European mythology is McCone (1987).
  Such transformations of "men into wolves" in pagan cult were associated with the devil from the early medieval perspective.
  The concept of the werewolf in Western and Northern Europe is strongly influenced by the role of the wolf in Germanic paganism (e.g. the French loup-garou is ultimately a loan from the Germanic term), but there are related traditions in other parts of Europe which were not necessarily influenced by Germanic tradition, especially in Slavic Europe and the Balkans, and possibly in areas bordering the Indo-European sphere (the Caucasus) or where Indo-European cultures have been replaced by military conquest in the medieval era (Hungary, Anatolia).
  In his Man into Wolf (1948), Robert Eisler tried to cast the Indo-European tribal names meaning "wolf" or "wolf-men" in terms of "the European transition from fruit gathering to predatory hunting."
caption: Vendel period depiction of a warrior wearing a wolf-skin (Tierkrieger).
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