The Wild Hunt by Emil Doepler 1905

"Grimm believed that in pre-Christian Europe, the hunt, led by a God and a Goddess, either visited "the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people" or they alternately float "unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes: an array which, less tied down to a definite time, explains more the natural phenomenon." He believed that under the influence of Christianisation, the story was converted from being that of a "solemn march of Gods" to being "a pack of horrid spectres, dashed with dark and devilish ingredients". A little earlier, in 1823, Felicia Hemans records this legend in her poem The Wild Huntsman, linking it here specifically to the castles of Rodenstein and Schnellerts, and to the Odenwald.

In the influential book Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (1934), Otto Höfler argued that the German motifs of the 'Wild Hunt' should be interpreted as the spectral troops led by the God Wuotan, which had a ritualistic counterpart in the living bands of ecstatic warriors (Old Norse berserkir), allegedly in a cultic union with the dead warriors of the past."

-taken from wikipedia

Emil Doepler illustration from Walhall: Die Götterwelt der Germanen (The Gods of the Teutons) 1905.

Source:

https://boudicca.de/site/de/gmedia-album/emil-doepler/

http://www.germanicmythology.com/works/DOEPLERART.html

https://pierangelo-boog.blogspot.com/2015/02/emil-doepler-illustrationen-fur-walhall.html

 

Quote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Hunt