In the Germanic tradition wolves were sacrificed to Odin/Wotan (Öld Icelandic “Óðinn”, Old High German “Wuotan”, Old English “Wōden”), who is associated with the Cosmic Tree; they were hung on ritual pillars called ‘wolf trees’: Old English “wulfheafod-treo” ‘wolf-head tree’, “waritreo” ‘wolf- criminal tree’, cognate to Old Saxon “waragtreo” ‘criminal tree’, Old Icelandic “vargtre” ‘wolf tree’.

In addition to such obvious correspondences, there are noteworthy combinations of ritual animals which were unlikely in the ecological context of the historical Germanic tribes: a wild boar and a lion on a Germanic shield from the fourth century B.C. (cf. the same combination in the Anittas text) and even the combination of leopard and lion with boar and bear attested in medieval Germanic tradition in the genre of dreams about wild animals (see Beck 1965:138-45, q.v. for a possible reflex of the same tradition in the Song of Roland). In other Indo-European traditions we find further correspondences both to individual elements of the set of Middle-World animals (especially cattle and hoofed animals such as deer, wild boars, and wild goats) and to the set as a whole.

Excerpted from “𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑜 𝐸𝑢𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑜 𝐸𝑢𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠; 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐴𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑜 𝐿𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑜 𝐶𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒” by T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov (translated by Johanna Nichols)

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