Werewolf Fact #17 - The Wulver is probably not actually a thing
So youāve probably heard of the wulver, if youāre into werewolves on the internet. Itās supposedly a Scottish legend about a wolf-headed guy who left fish on the windowsills of the needy. How kind.
Well, frankly, Iām not at all convinced the wulver was ever really a thing in folklore. Hear me out. This is a tidbit about checking your sources.
Iām a folklorist. That means I professionally study this stuff and have degrees in it. Iāve given lectures and taught classes on subjects in folklore and mythology, especially werewolves. Iāve defended my research and my work from boards wanting to find some kind of hole in my work to prove I was wrong about something.
When itās your job, itās very important to check sources for accuracy - and to double-check them for authenticity. If you can, find the primary source. This means find the original documentation or the oldest possible occurrence or recording of the myth. If you canāt find one? It may not actually have been something people believed in.
This is where things get complicated. Lots of folklore and myth came from oral traditions, and as such, weāve doubtlessly already lost tons of great things. That means people often didnāt write this stuff down, in part because these beliefs were occurring in time periods wherein literacy was hard to come by. When it comes to this, the best you can do is to find secondary proof in artwork or artifacts from the time period, or else a medieval monkās chronicle of what the locals believe in, just to give a few examples.
All this said, letās get back to the wulverā¦
As mentioned, the wulver myth of the kind, fish-giving werewolf supposedly comes from Shetland. Itās caught on on the internet to the point that when I mention werewolves, it often gets brought up by someone at some point. There were even some wacked-out ridiculous spiky silly monsters in the latest God of War game called wulvers (but they are, predictably, brainlessly malevolent and aggressive, so whoever randomly pulled the name āwulverā off the internet for the gameās development couldnāt even be kind enough to respect that supposed legend, either).
But finding āwulversā mentioned in professional werewolf studies by academics in the field publishing well-researched work is virtually impossible. Wikipedia will claim to you that there are a few articles that mention them, but some of them actually donāt. Do we ever hear the big names in werewolf studies mention wulvers? No, nor do they ever mention anything like them.
Do we have a primary source for wulvers? No.
We have no monkās account and no ancient piece of writing from the region that indicates any belief in wulvers, nor do we have any kind of illuminations, bestiaries, engravings, woodcuts, paintings - we have nothing. No proof at all.
True, this doesnāt entirely mean that people didnāt believe in them. Maybe they did. But without a source, we canāt responsibly claim in a professional work that wulvers were ever a thing in folklore.
But wait, Mav! There is a source!
Every single article I have ever seen on the internet (because Iāve never come across the wulver in professional werewolf studies) only ever cites just one source for the wulver: Jessie Saxbyās Shetland Traditional Lore, published in 1932.
Itās bordering on impossible to reasonably get a copy of this book. Itās not available digitally. Itās been out of print for years. The only print copies available range around $100 in price and are essentially falling to pieces from mishandling, at least the ones Iāve encountered.
Virtually every other werewolf legend you can name has multiple sources and often at least one primary source - sometimes multiple, especially in the case of Greek and Roman werewolf legends. The wulver doesnāt have even one.
Donāt get me wrong, I donāt want to try to discredit Saxbyās work. If someone out there can offer me some good proof that people in Scotland ever actually believed in the Wulver, thenā¦ awesome.
But at this point and after years of trying to find one, I still canāt find any reliable historical source to actually say with confidence that the wulver is a legitimate folkloric belief.
Even if someone were to suddenly present to me a Scottish writing from whatever era that has overt mention of wulvers and prove me wrong, though, the principle of this idea still stands.
You really shouldnāt believe everything you read on the internet (havenāt you ever heard the Abe Lincoln quote about that!? Oh waitā¦), especially about folklore. The internet is a vast and rich source for false information - and that seems to apply even more where folklore (sometimes especially werewolves) is involved. Always check your sources!
(If you like my werewolf blog, be sure to check out my other stuff!
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