Wulver

Also Known As: also Wullver; from the Shetland place-name element in Wulver’s Hool, itself Old Norse álf, fairy, plus hóll, hill
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Scottish Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: A solitary wolf-headed man who fishes from a rock in deep water and gives his catch away, harmless unless provoked.
Role in Mythos: He has none in inherited tradition; he was written into Shetland lore in 1932 by the folklorist Jessie Saxby, on the strength of a misread place name.
Relation to Humans: He avoids people, keeps to his own hillside and his own fishing rock, and does not molest anyone who does not molest him. His only recorded dealing with humans is leaving fish on the window-sills of poor households.

A few small fish on a window-sill at first light, the silver already going dull, the salt not yet dry on them. Nobody in the house heard anyone come. Nobody in the house asked too closely. That image is the whole of the Wulver, and it is one of the most widely repeated pieces of Scottish folklore alive on the internet today, and it is barely older than the wireless.

The creature Shetland is supposed to have believed in was a man with a wolf’s head, covered from crown to heel in short brown hair. He kept a cave dug into the side of a steep knowe, halfway up a hill. He did not trouble anyone who did not trouble him. Fishing was what he did, and he had a rock of his own out in the deep water, known ever since as the Wulver’s Stane. There he pulled up sillocks and piltocks, the first-year and second-year coalfish that fed the islands for centuries, and what he did not need he handed on to whichever family in the township was doing worst that winter.

The stone under him is cold and never quite dries. The line goes down into water the colour of gunmetal, and comes up, and goes down again, and the wind off the Atlantic works at the back of his neck all afternoon while the light shifts and the gulls lose interest.

There has never been a wolf in Shetland. There has never been a native land mammal in Shetland at all: no land bridge survived the last ice age, and every four-legged thing on the islands, the otter included, arrived in a boat with somebody. A wolf-man is a peculiar thing for an archipelago to invent when nobody living there had ever seen a wolf, or heard one, or lost a lamb to one.

The islands did put something in those hills, and it was not lupine. In the 1890s a young Faroese scholar called Jakob Jakobsen came north to salvage what remained of Norn, the Norse speech Shetland had used until roughly the eighteenth century, and while he was about it he gathered several thousand place names. They appeared in 1901 as *Shetlandsøernes Stednavne*. Among the names built on Old Norse *hóll*, hill, Jakobsen set out a small cluster scattered right across the archipelago: Wolvhul and Wolwul in Delting, the latter also called Da Wolwul Knowe; Wolewul in Weisdale; Wolhul in Fladdabister; Wolver(s)hul in Mid Yell.

He had no doubt what the first element was. It was Old Norse *álf*, fairy. In Shetland names an *á* has a habit of surfacing as *wo*, and the Faroese keep *álvarhús*, fairy house, sitting close enough alongside to settle the matter. Every one of those hills was a fairy hill.

The reading was public in Shetland long before anyone put a wolf on it. In 1905 the folklorist John Spence, who had been reading Jakobsen, wrote in the *Shetland Times* about a mound near Busta House in Delting. He spelled it Olwil, and he stated without hedging that the name was a contraction of Wulver’s Hool and signified the Fairy Knowe.

Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby was born at Halligarth in Baltasound on Unst in 1842, daughter of a doctor who was also a naturalist. She married at seventeen, was widowed at thirty-one, and wrote her way through the rest of it: forty-seven books, mostly boys’ adventure stories, some poetry, some folklore, enough to make her the first professional writer the islands produced. She campaigned for the vote. She had a very vivid imagination, and she did not care for the fairy.

So she gave the hill a better tenant. *Shetland Traditional Lore* came out in 1932, when she was ninety, and was revised the year after. The Wulver, she wrote there, was a creature like a man with a wolf’s head, who had short brown hair all over him; his home was a cave dug out of the side of a steep knowe, half-way up a hill; he didn’t molest folk if folk didn’t molest him. He was fond of fishing. He had a small rock in the deep water known to this day as the Wulver’s Stane, and he was reported to have frequently left a few fish on the window-sill of some poor body. A handful of sentences, and one of them fixed a rock in the sea as though every household in Shetland had always known which one it was. She named her own house Wulvershool.

The Shetland Archives have been fielding questions about him for years, and their answer is not the one people are hoping for. Brian Smith, the archivist there, puts it as plainly as it can be put: Jessie was the sole creator of the Shetland wulver, and nobody before her had ever heard of a Shetland wolf-man. There is no wulver tradition older than 1930.

Since roughly the 1990s the creature has done extraordinarily well for himself. He fishes on illustrations, on greetings cards, in a hundred listicles about kind monsters. Someone has even proposed a medical origin, suggesting the wolf-headed man of the islands might preserve a folk memory of Hunter syndrome, which is careful reasoning applied to a being with no memory behind it at all.

Scotland was never short of a werewolf, mind. It had a word for one, and the word carries a paper trail the Wulver can only envy. Warwolf, werwolf, warwoolf, warwoof: Henryson has it in his *Fables* before 1500, in company with the pegase perillous, transformed by assent of sorcery. Kennedy is flyting with it by 1508. James VI asks in the *Daemonologie* of 1597 whether our war-woolfes are not one sort of the spirits that haunt and trouble dwelling places. In 1660 a weaver at Sproustoun called Michell Usher a warwoof and Usher’s wife a witch, and found himself in front of a court for it. Robert Kirk, in 1691, has were-wolves wounded at home while the bodies they have assumed are struck somewhere else. Three centuries of Scots werewolf, and no wulver anywhere in it.

What the Wulver can do is small and wholly benign, which is the point of him. He fishes better than the people whose window-sills he stocks. He keeps to his rock and his hillside. He does not change shape, for all the wolf’s head, and he was never a man who turned into something: the head is simply what he has. His limits are stranger than his powers. There is no encounter tale, no bargain, no taboo, no charm against him, nothing anyone ever did to a wulver or had a wulver do to them beyond the fish. No parents, no kin, no enemy, no death. Folklore that has been lived in for generations accumulates that kind of furniture without trying, and his hillside is bare.

The knowes are still where Jakobsen wrote them down. Wolvhul, Wolwul, Wolhul, Wolver(s)hul, in Delting and Weisdale and Fladdabister and Mid Yell, hills that carried the fairy in their names for centuries before anyone thought to put a wolf in them. Whatever the *álf* was, it had no wolf’s head, and it left nobody any fish.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Wulver?

The Wulver is a wolf-headed man of Shetland folklore, covered in short brown hair, who lives alone in a hillside cave and fishes from a rock called the Wulver’s Stane. He is unusual among wolf-creatures for being harmless and generous, leaving fish on the window-sills of poor households. He was described by the Shetland writer Jessie Saxby in *Shetland Traditional Lore*, published in 1932.

Is the Wulver genuine Shetland folklore?

No. The Shetland Archives state that there is no wulver tradition older than 1930 and that Jessie Saxby was the creature’s sole creator. The name comes from Shetland place names such as Wulver’s Hool, which the Faroese scholar Jakob Jakobsen traced to Old Norse *álf*, fairy, and *hóll*, hill. Those were fairy hills, not wolf hills.

Is the Wulver a werewolf?

Not in the usual sense. The Wulver is never described as a human who transforms; the wolf’s head is simply what he has, permanently. Scots did have a genuine werewolf word, warwolf or werwolf, attested from before 1500 to the late 1600s in Henryson, in the flytings, in James VI’s *Daemonologie* and in Robert Kirk, but the Wulver appears nowhere in that record.

What does the Wulver do?

He fishes. Jessie Saxby describes him sitting for hours on a rock in deep water catching sillocks and piltocks, the young coalfish that were a Shetland staple, and frequently leaving a few fish on the window-sill of some poor body. He does not molest anyone who leaves him alone, and no story records him harming a person.

Were there ever wolves in Shetland?

No. Shetland has no native land mammals at all, because no land bridge connected the islands to Britain or Europe after the last ice age. Every land mammal on Shetland, the otter included, was brought there by people, and wolves were never among them.