Mythology of the Wild Hunt
Even in Winter, with your Yuletide fires lit, you are not safe. Stay indoors, attend your hearths and the limin of your home. Try to keep the night at bay by the telling of your tongue. Remember your kin, honor your ancestors. For at this time the dead begin to stir, riding upon hallowed and familiar roads, galloping through villages and wastes, flying through the forests of the mind. Such raids are reminders that the past is not a dead thing, but may return, like a hunter, to follow us for a time.
The origins of the Hunt traditions prevail throughout Northern Europe and are rife with the terrible images of invasions and night raids where the trees and houses are light with fires. The unintelligible voices of the unknown enemy call through the night. The Hunt is called many things by many people; Odensjakt (Odin's Hunt), Oskerei (Horric or Thunderous Ride), Gendreid (Ride of the Dead). Versions of the Hunt recall the participants chasing beautiful otherworldly maidens, sometimes called the Moss Maidens. The French version calls the Hunt "the Family of the Harequin" and is most like a derivation of the name for the Norse Goddess of death ... Hel.
Regardless of their regional names, all Hunts seem to share several common features wherever they appear: a spectral leader, a following train, announcement by a great baying of hounds, crashes of lightning, and loud hoofbeats along with the Huntsman's shouts of "Halloo!" Death and war often follow in their wake.
Though the leader of the Hunt varies by location, its association with death imagery remains a constant. Its most frequent master is Odin or one of his many avatars, and no doubt his role as the god of dead heroes makes him particularly appropriate here. For in Valhalla did Odin gather the greatest warriors for his army towards the battle in the twilight of the gods. Even Odin's horse, Sleipnir, is suggestive of funerary imagery: its eight legs are thought to represent four men (two legs apiece) carrying a corpse. Whether under the name of Grim or Wotan, when led by the gallows god, the Hunt becomes a terrifying, roving memorial of the ancient dead and the physical routes they have taken to and from their graves.
Odin and his hosts were defeated in the battle of Ragnarok by Surtur the leader of the fire giants in the land of Muspelheim killed by the Sword of Revenge which blazed and added a color of blood to the twilight of the whole world. From this end of the world is born the new breed of riders called the Wild Hunt who support and serve those who came after Surtur.