🜨 The Männebünde: Odinnic cult of the wolf – Part 1 🜨
I will begin this series by stating that the idea of a wolf cult is only theorised and that while there is a lot of evidence, especially when looking at the wider Indo-European family, it is largely based on scholarly guesswork and assumption. Personally I do believe that there is enough proof to assert that it existed but there is a lot of information that has been lost.
I will also add that this is a huge subject, far too big for this platform, and so I will be attempting to summarise as much information as I can in this series, with the aim of getting the subject out there and hopefully encouraging further reading.
With that out of the way, let’s begin.
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What are the männebünde?
Roughly translating as an alliance of men (manne « of men », bund « alliance » from the verb binden « to bind, to become involved, to commit oneself, etc »,) or a group of men that are bound to each other, these groups were the *harjaz (PGmc), or *kóryos (PIE), hence Here (OE) and Herr (ON). They were the warbands you hear about in history and legend. The cattle raiders of the bronze and iron ages, the Anglo Saxon invaders and viking raiders.
They generally consisted of young men, eager to learn and prove themselves to their tribes. This was their coming of age ritual.
Taken from their tribes around the time they entered puberty, they were taught to fight, fend for themselves, learn esoteric knowledge regarding the gods and how to communicate with and honour them, and the myths of their people which were passed down from generation to generation.
They often fought as the vanguard in front of the more seasoned warriors. Tacitus states in Germania how he is « unimpressed with the horses and horsemanship of the Germans and says their advantage lies with the swift youths who fight afoot in the front lines. » Multiple sources also state how warriors would often fight naked, with no armour or shields, often wearing animal skins. They were the úlfhéðinn and berserkir.
These lads did not yet own property or cattle, they had no families, they had no armour. In contrast to the adult men of the tribe, they were homeless. As Kershaw states, « When we recall that ritual reality is the true reality (3.3), we will realize that these youths are in a truly odd position. The married, propertied men have a place in the social order. The women have a place, because they are part of someone’s household, as daughter, wife, or widowed mother. Likewise the little children have a place; they, too, are part of a household. But the youth of the *koryos is no longer part of anyone’s household, and he does not yet have a household of his own. »
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To summarise, the männebünd is a group of pre-pubescent boys taken from their tribes to learn everything they need to know to become a man of value. It is a tradition that stretched from the bronze age Indo-European steppe all the way up to the end of the viking age in Scandinavia. During their coming of age ritual they were used as raiders and shock troops, but they also often employed more wolfish tactics such as stealth and guerilla warfare. This was a time of great learning, in martial warfare, survival skills, esoteric knowledge and tribal history, and also most likely involved a great deal of improvisation and teamwork. It would separate the weak from the strong and forge lifelong fellowships for those involved. This was where the lives of these boys would truly begin.
In Part 2 I will discuss the cult of Óðinn and his involvement with the männebünd.
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https://t.me/sigmundsarchive/24
🜨 The Männebünde: Odinnic cult of the wolf – Part 2 🜨
The Cult of Odin
In the first part I explained roughly what the männebünde are, or at least the part that is the rite of passage for young men (as for some it would not stop when they come of age, but more on that later.) So how does Odin fit into this?
Odin was known by many names: Wotan, Woden, Óðinn, Wuotan, etc, depending on your region. The prefix of his name comes from Proto Germanic *wōdaz which meant rage, ecstasy and manic inspiration, and from there we get his PGmc name *wōdanaz. My personal interpretation of what *wōdaz is would be the bloodlust you feel when you fight. That feeling of seeing red, where oftentimes you wonder afterwards exactly what happened because it feels like a blur. If you’ve ever been in a brawl or streetfight you may know what I mean.
The berserker rage.
In her dissertation Kershaw says,
« Wodan id est furor, writes Adam of Bremen, ‘Wodan, that is, madness,’ and he describes the statue of the god, outfitted as Mars. Hofler explained the many facets of this « most multiform » of gods by deriving them all from his role as god of the ecstatic warrior brotherhoods. Adam’s words give us precisely this in capsule form: Here is the god as Herjann; his very name contains the concept of ekstasis. »
Odin also had many epithets, perhaps countless, but one of them was Herjan, from *Herjanaz and ultimately from *Koryonos, which through the suffix *-naz, gives us the meaning « chief of the army, host or warband. » The word chief doesn’t quite cut it though, as he wasn’t simply the chief, he was the personification of it.
The related verb herja ON, hergian OE, herron OHG, harry ModEn, means « to make a predatory raid, destroy, ravage, plunder », and so if herja, etc is what a herr does, then it gives us an idea of the sort of army we are looking at: not some highly organised host, but a smaller raiding party.
This goes back to what I mentioned in part 1 about the cattle raids of the bronze age and the viking attacks across Europe. You need only to substitute cattle for gold and you see a clear continuation of the herjan.
Wealth was important in Germanic culture and the *Þeudanaz (leader of the people, note the suffix *-naz) was expected to reward those loyal to him with gold, silver, or in earlier times, cattle, but the devotion of the herjan to their *þeudanaz is even easier to understand when you consider him as the embodiment of the people. By applying the same logic to Odin as Herjanaz you also see him as the embodiment and leader of the herr.
That is the sort of war god he is.
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We can find another linguistic example of Odin’s link to the herr via his einheriar, who are of course the warriors who end up in Valhǫll. Einheriar translates to lone fighters (or harriers).
Kershaw says of the translation, « De Vries, followed by Simek, calls Thor « der Allein-Kampfende; » [the lone-fighter] and this he certainly is, but the Einheriar are not: they will fight as a herr. C-V has for Thor « thou great champion, » and for the einheriar « the
‘only’ or great champions.• For those who favor this translation, « only » is used in the sense of « select; » these are Odin’s chosen. »
Kershaw then goes on to persuasively use comparitive linguistics between Sanskrit and PGmc to suggest that ein (only) can be used to mean « paragon of », making the einheriar the paragon of the herr, thus creating another connection between the männebünde and Odin.
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One final link that I will make in this chapter is to the wild hunt. The wild hunt can be found in folklore right across modern Germanic countries, from England, Sweden and Austria to France, Iceland and Germany. The figurehead or leader of the hunt, or furious host, varies from region to region, but in many places Odin has been placed at the forefront. Of course, if we go back to Odin’s epithet Herjan, which stems from PGmc *Herjanaz which meant leader/embodiment of the herr, we can now apply the same linguistic logic to *Wōdanaz giving us the meaning « leader/embodiment of fury, or the furious host.
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