How does this artwork elucidate its Background?
The Wild Hunt of Odin is based on the Wild Hunt motif from folklore. In the Scandinavian tradition, the Wild Hunt is often associated with the god Odin. It consists of a terrifying procession that hurl across the sky during midwinter and abduct unfortunate people who have failed to find a hiding place. In the Norwegian material, figures other than Odin who have been named as leaders of the hunt include Lussi, sometimes identified as Adam's first wife, and Guro Rysserova, a supernatural female being with a mysterious male companion. The folklorist Christine N. F. Eike has argued that the motif might have its origin in European traditions where young, unmarried men wear masks and move in processions during Christmastide.
Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831 – 1892) belonged to a group of Late Romantic Scandinavian painters who had inherited an interest in Norse mythology from the early 19th-century Romantics. The most prominent painters in this group were the Norwegian Arbo and the Swedes Mårten Eskil Winge (1825 – 1896) and August Malmström (1829 – 1901). In accordance with writers like Adam Oehlenschläger and N. F. S. Grundtvig, they viewed their mythological paintings as ethical allegories and not as representations of real deities. In modern culture, the Wild Hunt had been popularized by Jacob Grimm, who in Deutsche Mythologie (1835) presented it as a pagan element that survived into Christian times, where it had been adapted into a demonic phenomenon. It had been used by 19th-century continental painters such as Joseph von Führich and Rudolf Henneberg, whose works Arbo was familiar with. It is also likely that Arbo was familiar with writings about the Wild Hunt by the Norwegian folklorist Peter Christen Asbjørnsen. Arbo depicted the Wild Hunt several times and made a first oil painting of it in 1868. The 1868 version, which shows the hunters in profile, is owned by the Drammen Museum and is on a long-term loan to Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Tromsø.
Christmastide folklore Deutsche Mythologie Jacob Grimm Norwegian Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum N. F. S. Grundtvig Mårten Eskil Winge Lussi August Malmström Romantic Wild Hunt midwinter Drammen Museum Scandinavian tradition Joseph von Führich Adam Oehlenschläger Rudolf Henneberg Peter Nicolai Arbo Tromsø Adam Norse mythology Odin Peter Christen Asbjørnsen