I’ve always been fascinated by wolves and it’s no secret at this point that they are my favourite animal. I just find everything about them to be so cool, from their howls to their hunting strategies. They truly are an amazing creature and I’ve been enjoying every minute researching them as well as the lore that surrounds them.

Wolf lore however is frustratingly dense, with just about every culture on earth have a story or two that feature wolves. My take on this is because humans and wolves have been interacting with each other since the Stone Age or maybe even earlier that it is not surprising the species that would have evolved into our closest animal companion would be the source of so much fascination. Wolves, in my eyes, are our mirror image as they show us what we strive for and what we fear.

Warriors and wolves are almost interchangeable in quite a few different cultures and I will be doing a deep dive examining this relationship going forward but right now I just want to share my theories. It’s my belief that it’s not so much the warrior that the wolf is tied to, but rather the hunter.

Humans have always studied the world around us and I believe that we would have studied the wolf while it was hunting so that we could become better hunters ourselves. We might have tried to mimic their cooperation since we are social animals like they are and our hunting parties, later war bands, would have tried to emulate the wolf pack’s structure. As we watched the wolf, some of them were watching us, curious as to what this strange bipedal ape was up to. They may have been drawn to our food or just wanted to interact with us as friends, either way the bond was formed and neither of our species have been the same ever since.

While I am focused on Gaul, this ancient friendship is very interesting to me so it’s going to be something I’m going to be diving into more on this site. Just like how we are influenced by our ancestors, the Gauls would have been influenced by their own ancestors and so on. It’s my belief that in order to truly know Gaul, one needs to know what came before it as Gaul didn’t exist in a vacuum nor did it just spring into existence out of nothingness. So expect a strange mixture of Gaulish, Proto-Indo-European and Stone Age research and theories going forward. This wolf lore rabbit hole is extremely deep and I’m enjoying every minute I spend looking into it.