#windsbraut

Today we are entering the realm of mythical creatures and I am sure that you have certainly encountered this lady before. In the north of Europe this creature is known as the Wind Bride. The wind bride is the name for a sudden, very violent, swirling, howling storm wind on the coast or at sea. In her human form, she is a beautiful young bride dancing on the waves of the sea.

Sculpture Windsbraut by Hartmut Wiesner in Wilhelmshaven, Germany

Depending on the region and mythical interpretation, she can move inland. Where exactly she comes from is not entirely clear, but there is an assumption that she comes from Greek mythology. There is the harpy Aello, the daughter of Thaumas and Electra. She was sent by the gods to bring peace - even by force - and to carry out punishments for crimes. They were depicted as winged beauties, in later times also as ugly old women with sharp claws who abducted people into the underworld to torture them there.

However, it is more likely that the wind bride comes from Norse or Germanic mythology. There she is the wife of Njörd, the god of the wind, and if we go by the handbook of German superstition then she also repeatedly accompanies the Wild Hunt (I don't mean the one from The Witcher 3). This is a ghost train or a ghost army. It can chase across the sky or roam the land in the form of a procession of corpses. The sighting is usually a harbinger of catastrophe, illness and death. In their wake are the fallen of battles, the unbaptised, the executed and those who have died prematurely or violently. As a rule, the Wild Hunt or the Wild Army can be heard announcing itself by screaming, howling, wailing or music.

In Germanic folklore, the Windsbraut is a type of felgeist that is the spirit of the whirlwind. The name translates as "wind's bride," and though they are traditionally female, they can occasionally be male. They are said to steal the earnings of farmers, but can be turned away by throwing a knife into the whirlwind.

The Windsbraut was the subject of a 1914 painting by Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka, though the piece is largely metaphorical and is largely unrelated to the feldgeist.

Image source.

Monster master list.

Sarah Gilbert reports for The Guardian on the crossing of the Atlantic by an all-women crew of 47 on the Roald Amundsen, a traditional sailing ship, a world first, apparently. The crossing took place from Tenerife, the largest island of the Spanish Canary Islands, to Martinique, the French Caribbean island in the Lesser Antilles, a journey of 3 167 nautical miles (5 865 km). Verena Brüning recorded the journey in photographs and published them as Windsbraut (Brides of the Wind). The Roald Amundsen was originally launched on the Elbe River in 1952 as a 50-metre-long steel-hulled tanker. In 1992, she was retrofitted as a brig, a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts, a design from the latter half of the 18th century. The Roald now chiefly serves as a training vessel.