Finns, Lapps, and Russians are held in particular aversion, because the Swedes believe that they have power to change people into wild beasts. During the last year of the war with Russia, when Calmar was overrun with an unusual number of wolves, it was generally said that the Russians had transformed their Swedish prisoners into wolves, and sent them home to invest the country.
In Denmark the following stories are told:—
A man, who from his childhood had been a were-wolf, when returning one night with his wife from a merrymaking, observed that the hour was at hand when the evil usually came upon him; giving therefore the reins to his wife, he descended from the vehicle, saying to her, “If anything comes to thee, only strike at it with thine apron.” He then withdrew, but immediately after, the woman, as she was sitting in the vehicle, was attached by a were-wolf. She did as the man had enjoined her, and struck it with her apron, from which it rived a portion, and then ran away. After some time the man returned, holding in his mouth the rent portion of his wife’s apron, on seeing which, she cried out in terror,—“Good Lord, man, why, thou art a were-wolf!” “Thank thee, wife,” said he, “now I am free.” And from that time he was no more afflicted.
If a female at midnight stretches between four sticks the membrane which envelopes the foal when it is brought forth, and creeps through it, naked, she will bear children without pain; but all the boys will be were-wolves, and all the girls maras. By day the were-wolf has the human form, though he may be known by the meeting of his eyebrows above the nose. At a certain time of the night he has the form of a dog on three legs. It is only when another person tells him that he is a were-wolf, or reproaches him with being such, that a man can be freed from the ban.
According to a Danish popular song, a hero transformed by his step-mother into a bear, fights with a knight:—
For ’tis she who hath bewitched me,
A woman false and fell,
Bound an iron girdle round me,
If thou can’st not break this belt,
Knight, I’ll thee destroy!
* * * *
The noble made the Christian sign,
The girdle snapped, the bear was changed,
And see! he was a lusty knight,
His father’s realm regained.
Kjæmpeviser, p. 147.
When an old bear in Ofodens Priestegjeld was killed, after it had caused the death of six men und sixty horses, it was found to be girded with a similar girdle.
In Schleswig and Holstein they say that if the were-wolf be thrice addressed by his baptismal name, he resumes his human form.
On a hot harvest day some reapers lay down in the field to take their noontide sleep, when one who could not sleep observed that the fellow next to him rose softly, and having girded himself with a strap, became a were-wolf.