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The Book of Were-Wolves by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
page 42 of 202 (20%)
mythical accounts of their transformation into wolves.

But the very idiom of the Norse was calculated to foster this
superstition. The Icelanders had curious expressions which are
sufficiently likely to have produced misconceptions.

[1. SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS: Opera, lib. vi. ep. 4.]

Snorri not only relates that Odin changed himself into another form,
but he adds that by his spells he turned his enemies into boars. In
precisely the same manner does a hag, Ljot, in the Vatnsdæla Saga, say
that she could have turned Thorsteinn and Jökull into boars to run
about with the wild beasts (c. xxvi.); and the expression _verða at
gjalti_, or at _gjöltum_, to become a boar, is frequently met with in
the Sagas.

"Thereupon came Thorarinn and his men upon them, and Nagli led the
way; but when he saw weapons drawn he was frightened, and ran away up
the mountain, and became a boar. . . . And Thorarinn and his men took
to run, so as to help Nagli, lest he should tumble off the cliffs into
the sea" (Eyrbyggja Saga, c. xviii.) A similar expression occurs in
the Gisla Saga Surssonar, p. 50. In the Hrolfs Saga Kraka, we meet
with a troll in boar's shape, to whom divine honours are paid; and in
the Kjalnessinga Saga, c. xv., men are likened to boars--"Then it
began to fare with them as it fares with boars when they fight each
other, for in the same manner dropped their foam." The true
signification of _verða at gjalti_ is to be in such a state of fear as
to lose the senses; but it is sufficiently peculiar to have given rise
to superstitious stories.

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