Ask anyone who has ever seen Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones—witnessing a Bolton "hunt" is rarely a good sign. So too is the case for the supernatural Wild Hunt of European myth. A phenomenon believed to resemble ghostly knights or hunters chasing the clouds across the sky, the Wild Hunt has long been considered a symbol of impending doom.
The tale of the Wild Hunt predominantly comes down through literature and "eye witness accounts" in the British Isles and Northern Europe, two cultures who very strongly value the tales of elves, faeries, and gods. However, the case of the Wild Hunt is a little different: it is thought that the apparition of the hunters is a symbol of the Anglo-Saxon or Norse god, Woden/Odin (respectively), a deity often associated with warfare and the sky. Just as in other myths regarding omens of catastrophe and threats, seeing the Hunt is believed to precede a manmade or natural calamity, generally a war, plague or famine, or—as seen with the Banshee of Irish folklore—the death of the person unfortunate enough to witness the Hunt in action.
Finding the Origins of the Wild Hunt
What is interesting when examining the Wild Hunt in depth is that the event itself is not a remnant of a pre-Christian myth that has come down through the ages. In actuality, the concept of the Wild Hunt is itself somewhat "manmade", as it was first documented as a mythological or folkloric trend by Jacob Grimm. Jacob and his brother Wilhelm are remembered for collecting numerous German (and some non-German) fairytales into one codex; yet these brothers—Jacob in particular—did more than merely collect such stories. They investigated the fundamental roots of them. The phenomenon of the Wild Hunt is the product of one such investigation.- The Slain Will Rise Again: Lost Valkyries Remembered
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