The Wolf As an Icon of Wildness
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The wolf as an icon of wildness Romanticization and demonization Endre Harvold Kvangraven Master thesis in Development, Environment and Cultural Change Centre for Development and the Environment UNIVERSITY OF OSLO May 15th, 2019 © Endre Harvold Kvangraven 2019 The wolf as an icon of wildness : romanticization and demonization Endre Harvold Kvangraven http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo II Abstract Wolves have been demonized and romanticized, feared and admired, figuring as barbaric intruders in some cultures and as kindred spirits in others. This thesis explores what wolves symbolize for different social groups in Norwegian cultural narratives. Through analysis of myths, legends, novels, music and film, the wolf is shown to be a key symbol that contributes to shaping cultural codes, while so-called wolfish behaviour is often merely human behaviour projected onto wolves. Demonization and fear of wolves are traced back to superstition, folk lore and Christian morality, while romanticization is linked to environmentalism and longing to reconnect with primal nature. Finally, ecological knowledge is shown to be an important corrective to narratives of demonization and romanticization in the current wolf debate. Keywords: wolves, wildness, nature and culture, rewilding, wilderness, cultural landscape, nature writing, myth, folk tales, fairy tales, superstition, human–animal studies, wolf management. III IV Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Nina Witoszek, for invaluable guidance, feedback and encouragement. I also want to thank my mom for supporting me while I’ve been working on this thesis. I’m grateful to the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) for giving me the chance to do this kind of interdisciplinary study, combining literature with ecology. Finally, I want to thank all the wolves in Norway for making the country a little wilder. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of the Slettås pack. V Table of contents Preface ............................................................................................................. ix 1. Staking out the territory ............................................................................. 1 Central questions .............................................................................................. 1 Methodological, theoretical, and analytical framework ................................... 2 Background....................................................................................................... 6 2. Cultural history of wolves in Norway: a comparative overview ... 13 International wolf representations: a brief overview ...................................... 13 Norwegian wolf representations: from paganism to pragmatism ................... 15 Gazing into the wolf’s green eyes .................................................................. 20 Werewolves: shape-shifters and victims of witchcraft ................................... 21 Folk tales and common knowledge ................................................................ 22 Construction of a symbol................................................................................ 29 3. The last Norwegian wilderness: Mikkjel Fønhus on Finnmarksvidda .......................................................................................... 33 Human–wolf relations in Mikkjel Fønhus’s stories ....................................... 33 Fønhus’s environmentalism in the light of recent developments ................... 43 Summary and conclusion ............................................................................... 45 4. Wolf–dog hybrids in popular literature: Gard Erik Sandbakken and Lars Lenth ............................................................................................ 46 Cultural history of wolf–dog hybrids: a comparative overview .................... 46 Two novels about the Norwegian “wolf debate” ........................................... 50 Summary and conclusion ............................................................................... 56 5. Crossing the threshold: transformation, liminality, and wildness . 58 Reinventing Romanticism: Ulver’s Madrigal of the Night ............................ 58 A fairy tale turned on its head: The Company of Wolves ............................... 68 Facing fear: freedom and security .................................................................. 73 Of wolves and gender ..................................................................................... 76 Of wolves and initiation ................................................................................. 77 The wolf as a boundary animal: liminality and transformation ..................... 78 Nietzschean wildness: transgressing culture and reason ................................ 80 Domestication, Christianity, and capitalism ................................................... 83 Crossing the threshold .................................................................................... 85 6. Untangling semiotic knots in wolf symbolism .................................. 87 Wolf as symbol: an overview ......................................................................... 87 Wolves and dogs: ethical implications of language usage ............................. 90 Wolves in the semiosphere ............................................................................. 92 VI Wolves in folk psychology ............................................................................. 94 7. Conclusions ................................................................................................. 98 8. Afterword .................................................................................................. 100 References ................................................................................................. 102 Appendix 1: Wolf persecution in North America as compared with Scandinavia ............................................................................................... 111 Appendix 2: Wolves in Norwegian children’s literature ............... 113 VII VIII Preface It’s been raining all day, rained most of the night, too, little pools of water gathering in the corners of my tent. If I had checked the weather report I might have stayed home. As I approach a lake, the view opens, offering a break from the undulating, densely forested terrain I’ve been hiking through. Out on the bridge a wind blows steadily from the south, funnelled through the valley, stirring up the water that reflects pale grey cloud cover. I cross the bridge and continue deeper into the forest. It’s evening but still broad daylight, mid-summer in Østmarka at the edge of Oslo. At a fork in the path I stop to look at a painted wooden sign the Norwegian Trekkers Association has nailed to the trunk of a spruce tree. As I turn back towards the path, about to start walking again, I see a large canine, about twenty metres away, yellowish grey-brown, wide eyes fixed on me as it crouches for a moment and springs smoothly onto the path, up a slope and out of sight. It takes me a few seconds to realize it’s a wolf. I run after it up the slope, hoping to catch sight of it again, but it’s gone. I know there are wolves in Østmarka, have seen the episode about them in NRK’s documentary series Ut i Naturen, but never thought I would actually see one. I go back down to the scene and study the terrain. The ground is mostly either bare rock or covered in moss, but, after a while, I find its tracks in a patch of mud strewn with pine needles and decomposing leaf litter at the edge of the path. The rain has stopped, so I pack my camera out, place a pen beside the tracks for scale, and take photos. I try to make out a trail, but the tracks quickly disappear into the undergrowth. A massive boulder rests against the hillside beside the path, and walking over for a closer look, I find an open space underneath, completely dry, like a cave. The wolf must have been taking shelter there, perhaps resting there through the day. There would usually have been other people on the path to disturb it, but I see no human tracks. Suddenly I realize I haven’t seen any other people all day – it’s the weather, too miserable; if it wasn’t for the rain the wolf would have heard or smelt me coming. It probably decided to make its escape when I turned my back to look at the sign, and if it hadn’t run out into the open I might have walked straight past IX without even seeing it. Wolves had been absent from Østmarka for a century, having been hunted out, when a pair established their territory in 2013, having wandered in from separate localities in Sweden (Holm 2018). A poll was organized by NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) in collaboration with the newspaper VG and the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature (Naturvernforbundet), and the wolves were named Fenris and Frøya. In Norse mythology, Fenris is a monstrous wolf associated with chaos and destruction,1 while Frøya (Freyja) is a goddess of fertility, love, and war, among other things. Frøya gave birth to three pups, but after a few months, she disappeared. Two years later, Fenris mated with one of his own daughters – this can happen when there are no other wolves around – and they had a litter, but later his daughter was shot by a hunter in self-defence when she attacked his hunting dog. The necropsy revealed she had been poisoned. Fenris was found severely ill with mange at the edge of Enebakk soon afterwards, had lost much