DIREWOLVES IN ASOIAF (GAME OF THRONES) AND WOLVES IN SLAVIC FOLKLORE

 

Author Cyanide Studio source

In George RR Martin’s series humans can shapeshift into other animals, but wolves are, as it was mentioned in “Dance with dragons”, different. They are harder to slip into, but if you do, the bond between the two of you is stronger then with any other animal.

As Haggon says in Prologue of Dance With Dragons:

Wolves were harder. A man might befriend a wolf, even break a wolf, but no man could truly tame a wolf. “Wolves and women wed for life,” Haggon often said. “You take one, that’s a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you’re part of him. Both of you will change.”

In Bulgaria for instance, there is a belief which states that if wolf and man were born on the same day, they will die at the same time as well. 

In legends, and myths and tales often there are a lot of variations, a lot of overlapping of stories, so in this case we must take into account that sometimes in some stories and customs of Slavic people – wolves, warewolves and vampires were the same creature. In Montenegro and Dalmacia they actually called vampires wolves. They believed that when a person rises from the grave he or she turns into wolf.  

In some cases just the soul of the deceist may enter wolf. That part of the belief is more closer to the warging ability in ASOIF and Game of thrones, where, as it seems, person only takes control of the mind of the direwolf while their body remains the same.

Wolf is In slavic folklore, in some oral naratives, related to, or even identified with death. There is one naration from the middle of the 19th century in Lonja (Croatian Posavlje) that describes how death comes upon sinners

When a [sinful] man is dying, death rushes to him on dragon’s

wings; following it permanently are six dire hounds, hungry

like the grey wolves in the woods (…). When it arrives at the

house, it sits down on the fence and gapes like a vainglorious

wolf. (…). The man gasps, his soul appears [from his mouth],

the hounds grab it, and in the sack it goes

To find out more watch my video:

REFERENCES:

* Simbolika životinja u Slovenskoj narodnoj tradiciji. Beograd 2005

     Aleksandar Gura

          Beograd, 2005

* Radenković, Ljubinko  (1996). Simbolika sveta u narodnoj magiji Južnih

Slovena. (The symbolism of the world in folk magic of the South Slavs).

Niš: Prosveta; Belgrade: Balkanološki institut SANU.

Psoglav / Slavic mythology

Often, Psoglav (a creature in Slavic mythology with a dog head and a human body) was mistaken for a giant. 
Konstantin Jiriček wrote that “among many medieval stories, there are those which tell about giants who lived in caves, and their next of kin were other giants with one eye and dog head”

In some Christian Orthodox churches there are icons with Saint Christopher who has a head of a dog. One such exists in the monastery in Sukovo, and there, they also call saint Christopher the dogheaded saint or “psoglavi svetac”. (By the way, in the same monastery there is a representation of Mary, mother of Jesus, with wings.) One legend says that he, saint Christopher, was actually Psoglav. when Roman army attacked one pack of psoglavs, they captured one of them and sent him to Rome. There he was introduced to christianity, and got the name Christopher. Later, because of his difficult life, and painful death he was canonised.

To find out more about Psoglavs watch my video:

REFERENCES:

Out of the books I read to prepare for this video the most helpful was Srpska mitologija u verovanju, običajima i ritualu (Serbian mythology)  by Sreten Petrović