Wolves
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Wolves elicit strong emotions in humans: some people view them with awe and reverence, others brand them thieves and murderers, the criminals of the animal world. Such extreme responses are nothing new, and wolves have found themselves in complicated—sometimes deadly—relationships with humans for millennia. They have been reviled and worshiped, regarded as sacred symbols or abhorrent monsters, called warriors or cowards, seen as representatives of a bestial threat or as the epitome of nurturing care. The reputation, and ultimately the fate, of this species are the result of long-entrenched cultural perceptions surrounding them.
We don’t know the nature of the earliest interactions between wolves and humans, but interactions there surely were. Wolves and humans share many qualities: we are both social species with strong hierarchical structures in our family groups; we both practiced (or practiced) cooperative hunting, pursuing large herbivores in family groups; we lived in similar environments. And, of course, our domestic dog is a descendant of the wolf. It has been suggested that a quasi-symbiotic relationship may have existed between wolves and humans. Such an association existed among the First Nations of North America, but in Eurasia it disappeared with the rise of the agricultural revolution.
Roman. Bronze Wolf Head, 1-2nd century CE. Cleveland Museum of Art
The Story of the Wolf
First Nations Wolves
The wolf generally receives positive PR amongst First Nations groups: they are viewed as spiritually powerful animals admired for their strength, wisdom, familial devotion, and cooperation. They also figure prominently in many origin stories. The exact symbolic meaning of the wolf varied between tribes. For the Inuit, the wolf is praised as a keen, successful hunter, but also viewed as an important source of fur. On the western plains, wolves were associated with warfare. Amongst the Navajo the wolf is Ma’iitosh ‘Big Trotter,’ a powerful figure with supernatural powers who can shift between animal and human form – he is a ‘skinwalker’ as well as a great hunter.
Northwest Coast wolf headdress, probably Nuu-chah-nulth from Vancouver; used in a dance which referred to a story involving the wolf. Northwest Coast Peoples. British Museum.
Norse Wolves
In Norse mythology the wolf is associated with Fenrir, the son of Loki and the giantess Angrboda. Fenrir represents a threat to the order of the universe, as it is believed that Fenrir would swallow Odin at the world’s end (Ragnarok). Only Tyr, the god of war, could feed or approach this giant, terrifying wolf. So we shouldn’t be surprised to find wolves connected to warfare as well. Odin was accompanied by two wolves, Geri, “Ravenous One,” and Freki, “Greedy One,” and the notorious Berserker warriors sometimes wore wolf skins into battle, howling like wolves as they fought.
Torslunda Plate, Swedish island Öland, 6th-7th centuries CE. Bronze. Swedish History Museum.
Wolves and Rome
One of the most famous wolf stories is the foundation myth of Rome: the Lupa, a she-wolf, suckled, and saved, the twin boys Romulus and Remus, who founded the city. From this beginning, the Lupa became connected to fertility in people’s imagination, and her actions were commemorated in the annual Lupercalia festival, during which young men ran, mostly naked, around the Palatine hill, hitting bystanders (particularly women) with strips of goat skin, in what was likely a combination of purification rites and fertility magic. Through its connection to fertility, and presumably sexuality, the word lupa came to mean, among other things, a prostitute or a vile woman. This meaning continued into the medieval period, when “immodest” women were called “she-wolves.”
Silver Coin, Roman Republic, 269BC-266BC. British Museum.
Medieval Wolves
In Christian—and pastoral—Europe, the wolf became a symbol of the devil, for just as wolves prowled around sheepfolds looking for food to sate their supposedly ravenous appetite, so too did the devil prowl around churches looking for vulnerable. Wolves became a symbol of rapacity, wantonness, cunning, and deceit. They were the animal most despised and feared, and thus required destruction. But why? Where does this visceral hatred of the wolf come from?
The notion of the evil wolf pervades the predominantly agricultural and pastoral groups of Eurasia, where the species was seen as a threat to one’s livelihood: wolves were killers of livestock, and thus endangered our survival. In other words, the wolf threatened civilization and order. This sentiment is echoed in European literature from as far back as the 11th century, when such tales as Little Red Riding Hood were first written down, and where the wolf epitomized the contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest.
Thomas Bewick, 1777. “Little Red Riding Hood.” The British Museum.
This hostile view prevented humans from beginning any sort of proper scientific research about the species until the mid-20th century. It seems we didn’t want to understand wolves, to realize that our long-established stereotypes might actually be wrong! These stereotypes migrated to the Americas with European colonists and settlers, who thought that the only good wolf was a dead one—an opinion that led to large-scale wolf eradication programs, wiping out populations from many parts of America and leading to ecological disasters, most notably in Yellowstone National Park.
Jean Baptiste Huet, 1760-1811. British Museum.
Wolves in Japan
Nowhere is the power of these European prejudices more evident than in the story of the Hokkaido wolves of Japan. During the Shogun Era (710-1867 CE) wolves were viewed as a beneficial species: they hunted the deer and other large herbivores that invaded gardens, destroying and eating the crops. Statues and other votives of wolves were set up at shrines across the country, notably the Mitsumine Shrine in Saitama prefecture.
The pregnant wife of Kiheiji, defending herself with a naginata against flying arrows, aided by the wolf Nokaze. Woodblock print. Utagawa Kuniyoshi , Edo Period. British Museum.
The fate of the Hokkaido wolf took a drastic turn during the Meiji period (1868-1912), when Japan opened its borders to westerners, including agricultural advisors who brought with them their hatred of wolves. They encouraged the Japanese to poison the animals, and the Hokkaido wolf is now extinct.
WOLVES TODAY
Our relationship with the wolf is still a tenuous one. In rural regions wolves remain the foes of ranchers and pastoralist groups, but different programs are beginning to work within these communities, seeking ways for wolves and ranchers and pastoralists to coexist in relative peace. Likewise, we are slowly realizing the importance of wolves (and other apex predators) in maintaining a balanced ecosystem—in other words, we need them. The reintroduction of wolves at Yellowstone Park has been controversial with some claiming ecological benefits and others worried about destruction of livestock.
To read more about the introduction of wolves, access this link:
Wolves arriving at Yellowstone Park for the first time since 1926. Courtesy of the National Park Service.
Research has shown that domestic dogs actually pose a far greater threat to livestock than wolves, but long-established ideas are difficult to change, and Canis lupus faces an uphill battle as it endeavors to overcome millennia of bad press and reclaim its rightful place in the ecosystem.
―Carolyn Willekes, PhD
Wolves at Yellowstone. Courtesy of Unsplash.