Odins Wild Hunt : A study over the Wild Hunt’s status during the societal changes ofthe 1800s.

During stormy nights, be careful if you're out on your own, because you might encounter Odin, the hunter of the night, and he may decide to force you along with his phantom armyacross the sky. Cursed by the christian God for breaking his laws, Odin hunts the creatures ofdarkness. A motif in folklore appearing all across Europe it has been discussed many timesover by many different scholars in regard to its origin and potential connection topre-christian mythologies. This essay discusses and explains the Wild Hunt’s status in 1800sSwedish culture and how the drastically changing society of that time changed the Wild Hunt.Using archival material discussing the Wild Hunt this is mainly using memory theory andfolkloristic narrative analysis as the method. This essay aims to understand the history of theWild Hunt, and understand what purpose it served for the people who lived with it, focusingon the individual memories of the Hunt that may have been forgotten by time. A lot ofdiscussions regarding the Hunt centres on its connection to norse asatru, however while thisessay will bring this up, that is not the focus, as it is something that has been discussed bymany other scholars before. The Wild Hunt itself was a bright example of living culture, howstories change and adapt and how different parts are remembered throughout culture. In theend it seems like urbanisation is what led to the fall of the Wild Hunt in Sweden as the naturalphenomena that may have inspired it were no longer present in the modern citie