Gulon

Also Known As: Latin gulo, “glutton”; Swedish jerff; German Vielfrass; Lithuanian and Muscovite rossomaka; the Glutton
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Scandinavian Mythology, Swedish Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: An appetite with no floor to it, and a method for defeating the one limit its own body imposes.
Role in Mythos: In the Renaissance literature of the North it is the standing emblem of gluttony, an animal supposedly put into the world so that greedy men could see themselves in it.
Relation to Humans: It rarely attacks people and lives off carrion, so the danger runs mostly the other way, with hunters killing it for a pelt that princes wore. Sleeping under that pelt was said to pass the creature’s hunger on to the sleeper.

Two pine trunks, a hand’s width apart, deep in the Swedish woods in a winter so cold the sap has gone to glass. Between them something is stuck. It is dark and long-haired and roughly the size of a mastiff, and it is hauling itself through the gap on its front claws with its hind legs scrabbling in the snow, and its belly is so tight that the skin has gone shiny. This is not an accident. It has been eating since dawn. It is now doing the only thing that will let it eat again.

Olaus Magnus, the last Catholic archbishop of Uppsala, put this animal into his great book on the northern peoples in 1555, and he was quite clear about the name. Among all the creatures thought to be insatiable in the north of Sweden, he wrote, this one holds first place. The common tongue calls it jerff, the Germans call it Vielfrass, the Slavs rossomaka, all of them meaning much the same thing, and the Latin name made for it is Gulo, because he is so called. Devourer. He credits the story to Miechowita’s book on the Sarmatias, so even in 1555 it arrives secondhand, already old, already travelling.

The description is precise in a way that suggests somebody had actually seen the animal. As great as a great dog. Ears and face like a cat’s. Feet and nails very sharp. The body hairy with long brown hair, the tail like a fox’s but shorter and the hair thicker, and out of that tail, Olaus notes with the eye of a man who knows what things cost, they make excellent winter caps. Half a century later Edward Topsell copied the whole account into English and added that there are two kinds, one black and one the colour of a wolf, that the beast has sharper teeth than any other creature, and that a bear is afraid to meet it.

Then comes the part that made its reputation. When the gulon finds a carcass it eats until its body is stretched out like a drum. Unable to hold more and unwilling to stop, it looks for a narrow passage between two trees and forces itself through, pressing the meat back out of itself by violence. Emptied, it returns to the carcass and fills itself to the top again, then goes back through the same narrow gap, and back to the carcass, and on and on until every scrap is gone. Then it goes looking, eagerly, for another. Topsell adds a detail that is somehow worse: if the beast can find no trees standing close enough together, it takes an alder, rends the trunk apart with its forefeet, and passes through the split it has made.

Nobody could agree what such a thing was descended from. Some said a hyena crossed with a lioness, which would make it the same animal the ancients called the crocuta. Others said a wolf crossed with a dog, since it was about a dog’s size. What everyone did agree on was what it was for. Olaus thought nature had produced it to make men blush, men who eat and drink until they vomit and then sit down and feed again. Topsell, who was a clergyman and could not let it go, named the offenders: the nobles of Muscovy and Lithuania and, worst of all, Tartary, who sit at table from noon until midnight, rising only to empty their stomachs so they can come back with a fresh appetite. Princes kept live gulons in their courts, and Topsell says they kept them for no other reason than as an example of incredible voracity. A pet that exists to be a rebuke.

Hunting it was a matter of using the appetite as a lever. The men would drag a fresh carcass into the deep snow where the beasts were thickest, wait for one to gorge, and shoot it with arrows in the moment it was jammed between the trunks, which the account admits is not without pain for the animal. There were other ways. Saplings bent over and tied with cords that flew up when the carcass was disturbed. Pits dug alongside the bait, into which hunger drove the beast. Dogs were almost useless, because its claws were so sharp that hounds which would set on the fiercest wolf would not go near it. All of this was for the skin. In summer the pelt was worth nothing; in winter it was worth a great deal, brown and white and black, patterned like damask cloth worked with figures, and it was made into winter coats for the kings of Poland and Sweden and the princes of Germany. The flesh was no use to anybody.

The last superstition is the best one. Sleep under a blanket of gulon skins and your dreams take on the nature of the animal. You wake with an insatiable stomach. You begin, without quite deciding to, laying snares for other creatures. Those who wear the pelts, Olaus says, never seem to be satisfied. The gluttony is contagious, and it comes through the fur.

Its powers amount to appetite, claws, teeth, and the nerve to drop out of a tree onto a horse. Its weakness is the same appetite, seen from the other side. The creature cannot stop, and the trick it invented to get around that fact is exactly the thing that pins it in place long enough for an arrow to find it. It is beaten by the one habit it cannot give up.

The animal underneath all this is the wolverine, Gulo gulo, which still carries the slander in its scientific name. Real wolverines are ferocious out of all proportion to their size, they do cache meat, and they will squeeze through gaps that look impossible. They do not disembowel themselves between pine trees. What Olaus Magnus drew, and Conrad Gessner copied out of his map into the standard zoology of the age, and Topsell then handed to England, was never quite a report. It was a sermon with fur on.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Gulon?

The Gulon is a legendary beast of the Scandinavian north, described most famously by the Swedish archbishop Olaus Magnus in 1555. It is roughly the size of a large dog, with a cat’s face, a fox’s body and tail, long brown hair and very sharp claws, and it feeds on carrion. Its name comes from the Latin gulo, meaning glutton.

Why does the Gulon squeeze between two trees?

The Gulon eats until its belly is stretched tight like a drum and it can hold no more, then forces itself through a narrow gap between two trees to press the food back out of its body. Once emptied it returns to the carcass and eats again, repeating the process until nothing is left. Edward Topsell added that if no trees stand close enough together, the Gulon splits an alder trunk with its forefeet and passes through the gap it has made.

Is the Gulon a real animal?

The Gulon is the wolverine, whose scientific name, Gulo gulo, preserves the old accusation of gluttony. Wolverines are genuinely fearless and will force themselves through very tight spaces, but the tale of gorging, voiding itself between trees, and starting over is folklore rather than natural history.

How was the Gulon hunted?

Hunters left a fresh carcass in the snow where Gulons were common and shot the animal with arrows while it was wedged between the trees emptying itself. They also used bent saplings tied as spring snares and dug pits beside the bait. Dogs were of little use, since the Gulon’s claws were sharp enough to frighten off hounds that would willingly attack wolves.

Why did people care about the Gulon?

The Gulon was a moral lesson with fur on it. Olaus Magnus believed nature had made the creature to shame men who eat and drink until they are sick and then start again, and Topsell aimed the same charge at the feasting nobility of eastern Europe. Its pelt was also genuinely valuable, patterned like damask and made into winter coats for kings and princes.