Above: Woden with headgear followed by wolf-warrior drawing his sword. From Vendel era Torslunda plates found on Öland, Sweden.
Saga of the Volsungs, from chapter 8: They went again to the forest to get themselves some riches, and they found a house. Inside it were two sleeping men, with thick gold rings. A spell had been cast upon them: wolfskins hung over them in the house and only every tenth day could they shed the skins. They were the sons of kings. Sigmund and Sinfjotli put the skins on and could not get them off. And the weird power was there as before: they howled like wolves, both understanding the sounds. Now they set out into the forest, each going his own way. They agreed then that they would risk a fight with as many as seven men, but not with more, and that the one being attacked by more would howl with his wolf's voice. "Do not break this agreement," said Sigmund, "because you are young and daring, and men will want to hunt you."
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In the 13th century Icelandic epic Völsunga saga, two of the central figures, Sigmundr and his son Sinfjötli, enter a liminal state upon discovering and putting on enchanted wolf-skins. Once clothed in these skins, they are unable to remove them for a fixed period - during this time they take on wolfish behavior. Their withdrawal into the forest functions as a space outside law and social order. As Kershaw notes in the book The One-Eyed God: “The kóryos-bands live in the forest and, like Sigmund and Sinfjötli, sustain themselves by hunting. The forest is ‘the world beyond’ the village” (The One-eyed God, p. 181).
As Kershaw suggests, the saga mirrors reconstructions of the Proto‑Indo‑European kóryos—youthful male warbands who temporarily left communal life to adopt a predatory, marginal existence. These secretive groups, defined by initiation rites, animal symbolism, and forest‑bound living “like a beast,” trained for raiding and combat before being reintegrated into their communities.
A broader historical backdrop reaching back well before the Common Era is offered in the essay "Berserks: A History of Indo‑European Mad Warriors" (p. 256). “By 1500 B.C., Indo-European speakers had established their dominance from Northern India to Western Europe, encompassing regions east, north, and west of Assyria. Before their dispersal, their ancestors had shared a language, a religion, a heroic poetry, and, what is less well known, some striking warrior styles. Their wolf-warriors, for example, fought with wolf hoods over their head and howled like wolves, while their horse-slashers dove beneath attacking horsemen to stab the steeds.”
Above: Dolon, the son of Emuedes, was a participant in the Trojan War – wearing wolf skin. Attic red-figure lekythos dated to 460 BC. The Norse úlfhéðnar (“wolf-coats”) and berserkir, closely linked with Óðinn, reflect similar patterns of animal identification and ecstatic combat. Although Völsunga saga does not explicitly name Sigmundr and Sinfjötli as úlfhéðnar, scholars generally agree their wolf-skins, predatory violence, and Odinic intervention situate them within the same symbolic archaic warrior context.
Austrian philologist Otto Höfler stated that such motifs are not random folklore but vestiges of cultic institutions. As summarized by Courtney Marie Burrell, “Höfler argues that the inner unity of the werewolf motif of the Völsunga Saga lies ‘in the ancient Germanic cultic-social institution of demon warriorhood’” (p. 165, Otto Höfler’s Characterisation of the Germanic Peoples: From Sacred Men’s Bands to Social Daemonism)
Lily Weiser in her 1927 work Altgermanische Jünglingsweihen und Männerbünde, p. 21 adds: “The mask-wearer is completely identical with the demon or the animal he represents. He himself is fully convinced of this; he is literally ‘possessed’”.
The Völsunga saga’s wolf‑skin example illustrates a liminal warrior transition that echo Proto‑Indo‑European kóryos and Norse úlfhéðnar. Recurring motifs of masks, possession, and forest‑bound existence indicate these scenes likely preserve traces of ritualized initiation and organized warrior bands rather than isolated folklore.
