Werewolves Around the World

One fear, many names

The werewolf belongs to no single nation, and the belief was never quite the same in two places. In one country the werewolf is a sorcerer in a belt, in another a cursed penitent, in another an unlucky child, and in some corners of Europe a corpse that will not lie still.

This page walks through the main regional traditions briefly. Folklore varies from valley to valley, and what follows are broad patterns, not rules. For the legend as a whole, begin with the overview of werewolf mythology; for causes and remedies in general, see signs, causes and cures.

France and the German lands

The French loup-garou carries a doubled name. Garou itself comes from an old Frankish word related to werewolf, so the full term says, in effect, "wolf-werewolf." French country belief often treated the change as a fate or a penance that had to be run out by night, and it was widely said that drawing a little of the creature's blood would set the person free. Settlers carried the loup-garou across the Atlantic. In French Canada, tales warned that someone who neglected their Easter duties for seven years in a row would become one, and in Louisiana the name has worn down to rougarou.

In the German lands the classic means of change was the wolf belt, a strap or girdle of wolfskin, said in the legends to come from the devil in exchange for the soul. Many local legends tell of the belt found, stolen or burned, and of the werewolf called back to himself by his baptismal name. The German werewolf was seldom sympathetic: the envious neighbor, the hired hand who slipped away from the harvest field.

Scandinavia and the Baltic

In Norway, Sweden and Denmark the werewolf is the varulv. Behind it stands the old Norse idea of the hamr, the shape or skin that a strong-souled person might change, explored under the bear and the berserker. Later country belief told it differently. A common story held that a woman who used a forbidden charm to escape the pains of childbirth would pay for it through her children: her sons would be werewolves, and her daughters would be maras, the night spirits that sit on sleepers' chests. In parts of Scandinavia it was said that a werewolf could be freed simply by being recognized and told, to his face, what he was.

The Baltic peoples have their own names: vilkacis in Latvian, libahunt in Estonian, vilkolakis in Lithuanian. A Swedish churchman of the sixteenth century wrote that around Christmas the werewolves of the eastern Baltic gathered in great numbers, broke into cellars and drank the beer, leaving the barrels empty. The same lands produced the old man who called werewolves the hounds of God, defenders of the harvest, whose story is told on the origins page.

The Slavic lands and Greece

Across the Slavic world the werewolf's names are close cousins: vukodlak in Serbian and Croatian, volkodlak in Slovene, wilkolak in Polish, volkolak in Russian. Most are built from the words for wolf and for hair or pelt. East Slavic tales tell of a sorcerer who, slighted at a wedding, turned the whole wedding party into wolves, and a medieval epic of the Rus says of one restless prince that he raced as a wolf through the night.

The Slavic werewolf also becomes something else with ease. In much of the western Balkans, by the time collectors wrote the beliefs down, vukodlak usually meant not a living werewolf but a corpse that would not stay in its grave. That long overlap is the subject of werewolves and vampires.

Greece holds the oldest European werewolf, Lycaon of Arcadia, and the tradition of the nine-year exile on Wolf Mountain. In later Greek folk belief, though, the borrowed Slavic word became vrykolakas, and meant not a werewolf but the walking dead.

Italy and Iberia

The Italian werewolf is the lupo mannaro, a name usually traced to a Latin phrase meaning man-wolf. In parts of the south a child born on Christmas night was thought to be in danger, as though such a birth trespassed on a holy hour. The lupo mannaro of country tales is often less a sorcerer than a sufferer, seized on certain nights by a fit that drives him howling through the streets until it passes. In some tellings his family is warned not to open the door to him until he has knocked three times, by which time he will be himself again.

In Portugal the werewolf is the lobisomem, in Galicia the lobishome, and elsewhere in Spain plainly the hombre lobo. The best-known cause there is birth order: the seventh son born in an unbroken line of sons was fated to become one, just as, in some tellings, a seventh daughter would become a witch. Families sought to turn the fate aside by asking the eldest brother to stand as the child's godfather. Once the change had come, the lobisomem was said to roam on certain nights, running out its fate, until someone wounded it enough to draw blood and so released the person within. Settlers carried the belief to Brazil, where it remains a familiar figure of country tales.

Across the Atlantic: the lobizon

In the Rio de la Plata region of South America, in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, the Iberian werewolf met older local belief and became the lobizon. Again the seventh son is the one in danger: when seven boys are born in a row, with no daughter between them, the last is said to become a lobizon, changing on Friday nights and roaming the dark farmyards. In Paraguay the figure blends with the luison of Guarani tradition, the seventh son of a mythic pair, a gaunt creature associated with death and with the dead.

A modern legend has grown up around the old one. In Argentina the president may stand as godparent to a family's seventh son, and it is often said that the custom began as a protection against the lobizon. It seems in fact to have come from a custom brought by immigrants in the early twentieth century, with the werewolf attached afterward. Folklore is still at work.

Ireland and Armenia

Medieval Ireland was known abroad as a land of werewolves. Writers told of the people of Ossory, an old kingdom in the south of the island, some of whom were said to take wolf shape, either as a family gift or under a curse laid by a saint. One early account says that when they went out as wolves they left their human bodies behind, and begged their friends not to move them, or they could not return. The best-known Irish story, of a speaking wolf under a seven-year curse, is told on the origins page.

In Armenia the tradition is unusual in being told mostly of women. The mardagayl, whose name joins the words for person and wolf, is a woman condemned for her sins to spend seven years as a wolf. In the stories a wolfskin comes down to her from above, and once she wears it she is driven out by night to do terrible harm, often to children, while doors and locks open before her. By day she is a woman again and hides the skin. Her ordeal ends when the seven years are served, or, in some tellings, when someone finds the skin and burns it. Like the Irish curse and the Arcadian exile, it is a punishment with a term and an end.

The traditions side by side

The table shows the most widely reported beliefs of each region, not the only ones.

Beyond the wolf's country

Where another animal ruled, the shapeshifter took another coat. In lands where a great cat is the chief predator, the place of the werewolf is held by tigers, leopards, lions and jaguars, and in East Asia the fox spirits take a large share of the stories. People imagine crossing into the animal they most fear and most admire. And every tradition on this page belonged to communities living close beside the real wolf.