Editing Wild Hunt (section)

==Historiography==
{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|quote="Another class of specters will prove more fruitful for our investigation: they, like the ignes fatui, include ''unchristened babes'', but instead of straggling singly on the earth as fires, they sweep through forest and air in ''whole companies'' with a horrible din. This is the widely spread legend of the ''furious host'', the ''furious hunt'', which is of high antiquity, and interweaves itself, now with gods, and now with heroes. Look where you will, it betrays its {{as written|connexion}} with heathenism."|source=— Folklorist Jacob Grimm.{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=918}} }}

The concept of the Wild Hunt was first documented by the German folklorist [[Jacob Grimm]] who first published it in his 1835 book ''[[Deutsche Mythologie]]''.{{sfn|Hutton|2014|p=162}} It was in this work that he popularized the term ''Wilde Jagd'' ("Wild Hunt") for the phenomenon.{{sfn|Hutton|2014|p=162}} Grimm's methodological approach was rooted in the idea, common in nineteenth-century Europe, that modern folklore represented a fossilized survival of the beliefs of the distant past. In developing his idea of the Wild Hunt, he mixed together recent folkloric sources with textual evidence dating to the medieval and early modern periods.{{sfn|Hutton|2014|p=163}} This approach came to be criticized within the field of [[folkloristics]] during the 20th century as more emphasis was placed on the "dynamic and evolving nature of folklore".{{sfn|Hutton|2014|p=163}}
[[File:Wodan's wilde Jagd by F. W. Heine.jpg|thumb|upright|"Wodan's Wild Hunt" (1882) by [[Friedrich Wilhelm Heine]]]]
Grimm interpreted the Wild Hunt phenomenon as having pre-Christian origins, arguing that the male figure who appeared in it was a survival of folk beliefs about the god [[Wodan]] who had "lost his sociable character, his near familiar features, and assumed the aspect of a dark and dreadful power... a specter and a devil."{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=918}} Grimm believed that this male figure was sometimes replaced by a female counterpart, whom he referred to as [[Holda]] and [[Berchta]].{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=927}} In his words, "not only Wuotan and other gods, but heathen goddesses too, may head the furious host: the wild hunter passes into the wood-wife, Wôden into ''Frau Gaude''."{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=932}} He added his opinion that this female figure was Woden's wife.{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=946}}

Discussing martial elements of the Wild Hunt, Grimm commented that "it marches as an army, it portends the outbreak of war."{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=937}} He added that a number of figures that had been recorded as leading the hunt, such as "''Wuotan, Huckelbernd, Berholt,'' bestriding their ''white war-horse'', armed and spurred, appear still as ''supreme directors of the war'' for which they, so to speak, give license to mankind."{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=937}}

Grimm believed that in pre-Christian Europe, the hunt, led by a god and a goddess, either visited "the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people" or they alternately float "unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on ''war'', ''hunting'' or the game of ''ninepins'', the chief employments of ancient heroes: an array which, less tied down to a definite time, explains more the natural phenomenon."{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=947}} He believed that under the influence of Christianisation, the story was converted from being that of a "solemn march of gods" to being "a pack of horrid spectres, dashed with dark and devilish ingredients".{{sfn|Grimm|2004b|p=947}} A little earlier, in 1823, [[Felicia Hemans]] records this legend in her poem ''The Wild Huntsman'', linking it here specifically to the castles of Rodenstein and Schnellerts and to the Odenwald.

In the influential book ''Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen'' (1934), [[Otto Höfler]] argued that the German motifs of the "Wild Hunt" should be interpreted as the spectral troops led by the god [[Odin|Wuotan]] which had a ritualistic counterpart in the living bands of ecstatic warriors (Old Norse ''[[Berserker|berserkir]]''), allegedly in a cultic union with the dead warriors of the past.{{Sfn|Kershaw|1997|p=|pp=31–35}}
{{wikisource|Felicia Hemans in The New Monthly Magazine Volume 8 1823/The Wild Huntsman|'The Wild Huntsman', a poem by Felicia Hemans.}}

[[Hans Peter Duerr]] (1985) noted that for modern readers, it "is generally difficult to decide, on the basis of the sources, whether what is involved in the reports about the appearance of the Wild Hunt is merely a demonic ''interpretation'' of natural phenomenon, or whether we are dealing with a description of ritual processions of humans changed into demons."{{sfn|Duerr|1985|p=36}} Historian [[Ronald Hutton]] noted that there was "a powerful and well-established international scholarly tradition" which argued that the medieval Wild Hunt legends were an influence on the development of the early modern ideas of the [[Witches' Sabbath]].{{sfn|Hutton|2014|p=162}} Hutton nevertheless believed that this approach could be "fundamentally challenged".{{sfn|Hutton|2014|p=162}}

Lotte Motz noted that the motif is found "above all in areas of Germanic speech." While found in areas once settled by Celts, these legends are told less frequently and they are not encountered in the Mediterranean regions, "at least not easily".<ref name="Motz 1984" />