Introduction

Abstract

Humanity has an ambivalent relationship with the wolf. Throughout history it has been considered both valiant and noble, but also a pest and a threat. Though admired as a skilful predator by hunting and war-mongering societies, it has also been feared as an animal that is able to kill and devour humans. In many cultures the observation of wolves in nature has inspired myths, legends and other folklore. In Northern Europe, however, the early, primarily Christian association of the wolf with rapaciousness and evil left its imprint on the political treatment of those the community considered to be wolves within their midst.¹ These human wolves were abandoned and persecuted due to their nefarious nature. The Germanic Middle Ages had a name for these wolfmen, expressed in the Old Icelandic term vargr, signifying both ‘wolf’ and ‘outlaw’. Morally unclean due to the crimes he committed — usually a murder — he was proscribed as a wolf, pronounced dead by the community and abandoned to the woods. As the homo sacer, he was the human cursed by and set apart from society, conceptually reduced to animal life, and anyone was allowed to kill him/her without being punished for homicide.²