The Grey Wolf

Wolves in History, Folklore & the Wild Imagination

There is something about a wolf that seems to belong in a story.

Perhaps it is the way we picture one moving through a dark forest, almost disappearing between the trees, or the fact that so many of the stories we have inherited seem to place the wolf somewhere just beyond the firelight. Waiting at the edge of the woods. Watching from the hill. Following the path home.

For centuries, wolves have appeared in folklore as both frightening and fascinating creatures. They have been monsters, omens and creatures of the wild, but they have also been guardians, companions, ancestors and even sacred animals. In some stories, the wolf is something to be feared; in others, it is something to be respected.

And here in Britain, there is an added layer to the story.

The grey wolf was once part of our landscape, moving through forests and open country long before the countryside looked anything like it does today. Wolves eventually disappeared from Britain, leaving behind a curious mixture of historical records, old stories, place names and folklore. The animal itself became something from the past, but the wolf never really disappeared from our imagination.

We still tell stories about them.

We still put them in our fairy tales, myths and legends, and we still seem to have a particular fascination with what might be hiding beyond the edge of the forest.

So perhaps the story of the grey wolf is not simply about a wild animal.

It is also a story about fear, wilderness, survival and the strange creatures we have carried with us long after they have vanished from the landscape.

The Wolf in Britain

It is strange to think of the wolf as a British animal, but the grey wolf once belonged to this landscape. Wolves lived here alongside people for thousands of years, moving through forests and open country long before Britain became the patchwork of fields, roads and villages we know today.

By the medieval period, however, things were changing. As farming expanded, wolves came into increasing conflict with people, particularly because livestock made easy prey. Wolves were hunted and deliberately persecuted, and there are records of this becoming an organised part of managing the countryside. In 1280, for example, John Giffard, Baron of Brimsfield, was given permission by Edward I to hunt wolves with dogs and nets in royal forests.

But the wolf was not always the villain.

One of the stranger medieval stories comes from the legend of St Edmund, the ninth-century king of East Anglia. After Edmund was killed, his severed head was said to have been found in the woods being guarded by a wolf, which had kept other animals from disturbing it. The image is a curious one: the animal so often portrayed as a threat becoming, instead, the guardian of the dead.

Eventually, wolves disappeared from Britain, although the exact date of their extinction is difficult to establish. What they left behind was more than bones and old hunting records. Their memory remains in place names, medieval stories, carvings and folklore, and perhaps this is part of why the wolf still feels strangely at home in the British imagination.

It may have left the landscape, but it never quite left the story.

Wolves in Folklore

Once you start looking for wolves in folklore, they seem to turn up everywhere, and rarely in quite the same form twice.

One of the most famous stories comes from the founding myths of Rome. Romulus and Remus, abandoned as babies, were said to have been discovered and suckled by a she-wolf. Here, the wolf is not something waiting to devour the helpless; she is the reason the children survive at all, eventually becoming part of the story of Rome's beginnings.

Norse mythology gives us something much darker. Fenrir is a monstrous wolf who grows so powerful that the gods eventually become afraid of him and bind him. He is destined to break free during Ragnarök and play a part in the destruction of the old world. Yet even here, wolves are not simply creatures of evil. Geri and Freki, two wolves associated with Odin, accompany the god and are fed from his table.

Then there are the werewolves — perhaps the most enduring example of the wolf crossing the boundary between human and animal. Stories of people taking the form of wolves appear in European folklore and go back to the ancient world, taking different forms depending on the place and period: a curse, a transformation, a magical act or something much more frightening.

And then, of course, there is the fairy-tale wolf.

The wolf of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs is clever, hungry and waiting somewhere beyond the safety of home. These stories gave generations of children a very particular image of the animal: the wild thing at the edge of civilisation.

But the wolf has never belonged to one role alone.

The Wolf: Villain, Ancestor, Guardian

Perhaps what makes the wolf so interesting in folklore is not the individual stories, but the different roles people have given it.

The villain is the easiest to recognise. Wolves live outside the boundaries of human society, and in folklore that often makes them a natural symbol of danger. They belong to the forest rather than the village, the darkness rather than the hearth, and the unknown rather than the familiar.

But there is another side to the wolf: the ancestor.

The story of Romulus and Remus is one example, but traditions connecting wolves with ancestry, identity and protection appear in different cultures around the world. These traditions are not all saying the same thing, and they should not be treated as one shared belief, but they show something important about the animal's place in human imagination. The wolf could represent not only what people feared outside themselves, but something they believed they came from or belonged alongside.

And then there is the guardian.

The wolf of the St Edmund legend protects the saint's remains, while Odin's wolves sit beside their master rather than threatening him. The creature that might have been expected to represent danger can suddenly become a companion or protector.

Perhaps we have never quite been able to decide whether the wolf belongs on the other side of the door, or whether it should be standing beside us.

It can be the thing we fear in the darkness, but also the creature we imagine walking through that darkness with us.

The Wolf in the Modern Imagination

The wolf may have disappeared from much of Britain, but it certainly did not disappear from our stories.

If anything, the modern imagination has made the wolf even larger. We have the wolf of fairy tales, the werewolf of horror films, the loyal wolf of fantasy novels and the almost romantic image of a lone animal standing beneath the moon. Somewhere along the way, the wolf stopped being simply an animal and became an idea.

Part of that comes from our changing relationship with the natural world. The wolf is often used to represent freedom, wilderness, instinct and independence, particularly in modern witchcraft and spiritual practice. These associations are mostly modern rather than ancient folklore, but they continue the much older habit of looking at the wolf and seeing something beyond the animal itself.

There is also a growing fascination with the real wolf. As attitudes towards predators and conservation have changed, wolves have increasingly become symbols of the wild places we have lost — and of the possibility of bringing some of that wildness back. Their disappearance from Britain is no longer simply a story about an animal that was hunted out; it has become part of a much bigger conversation about what we want our landscapes to look like in the future.

And perhaps that is the strangest part of the wolf's story.

We drove it from the landscape, but never quite stopped looking for it.

Archive Bookshelf

A small selection of books for exploring the history, folklore and natural history of the wolf.

Hunt for the Shadow Wolf — Derek Gow
Britain's lost wolves, their history and the possibility of their return.

Of Wolves and Men — Barry Lopez
Wolf natural history, folklore and our changing relationship with the animal.

A Short History of the Wolf in Britain — J. E. Harting
An 1880 historical account of the wolf in Britain.

Wolf Land — Elizabeth Marshall
Britain's lost wolves explored through archaeology, landscape, literature and folklore.

Further Reading

For a deeper look at the wolf's place in natural history, mythology, folklore and human attitudes towards the wild, these books provide a useful starting point.