Sweden Myths and Legends

A kind of re-post in video form of old posts from my blog

Snap, crackle and pop

For some reason I never see this addressed. I can’t be the only one who have noticed?
The Dogman pops.
It crackles.
It snaps.
And it always seems to be connected to it’s ability to move from quadrupedal to bipedal motion.

In last night’s episode of Dogman Encounters Radio it came up again, starting at 19.40:

“It lurched back onto its rear legs, and then there were these two distinct popping sounds as it straightened up.”

Sweden, wolves and Dogmen

By some immensely fortunate fluke Dogmen seem to be, at least as of right now, non-existent in Sweden.
Or are they?
Quite regularly I do search for a bunch of terms in Swedish. Upright wolf, wolf on two legs, strange creature in the woods etc. So far I have found nothing online indicating that Dogmen are in Sweden right now.
However, while searching for wolf attacks on sheep to see if I could find any discrepancies that might point me in a particular direction I did come across a peculiar case, which I will soon discuss.

After having been as good as extinct in Sweden in the 1960’s, the current 415 wolves in Sweden seem to mainly hang around the Värmland, Västmanland, Södermanland, Uppland and Dalecarlia areas, as seen on the map on the left. Naturally, many of the attacks on sheep happen in this area.
Strangely though,there has been quite an increase in later years of wolf attacks around the Scania area, in the Southernmost part of Sweden.

Location of Scania

Of course, wolves can wander far, still, it seems somewhat strange that little Scania alone is subjected to 30% of all wolf attacks on sheep.
There is a possibility though that some of the Scania attacks are actually by dogs.

Another strange coincidence is that Scania is the only Swedish province where Werewolves have allegedly been sighted in the 20th century.

Books, photos and a general update

Happy spring to everyone!
I hope you are all well?
I’m so pleased the dark, heavy winter has finally lifted here in Sweden. I’ve been immersing myself in nature every chance I get lately which has been wonderful!
Though, on my last outing I was quite spooked by the sudden appearance of a sinister-looking tree root. At least I hope it’s just a tree root…
Had I not been in the middle of the woods with no one knowing my whereabouts I might have checked it out a bit more but as it was I just took a few photos and turned back.
I know I will need to return one day to have some clarity but I will NOT do it alone.

Book recommendation

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting book by a Swedish author.
The book is called Stallo and is written by Stefan Spjut and it’s been translated to a few other languages. The English version seems to be called The Shapeshifters. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the term Stallo might now understand why this book was very interesting to me…

Sort of back and thinking of France

I’m around again. Not because I feel much better, I don’t. In some ways I feel worse. Apparently taking a break is not something I’m allowed since all kinds of hell broke loose when I tried.
Long story short; one of the kittens died on Christmas Eve at 7 weeks old, fading kitten syndrome, another one almost died a few weeks after but I fed her boiled water with teeny amounts of sugar and salt in for 24 hours or so and she bounced back.
Two days ago one of my older cats died of old age.
These are the heavy things.
In the annoying things pile we have a gazillion technical things not working as they should and the übergazillion things I’ve had to do to try to fix them.
During this “free time” I’ve been creating houses for The Sims Resource, but absolutely everything that could go wrong did. Murphy has been around a lot, and I mean A LOT! I can’t even go into detail since it frustrates me too much, lol.

French beasts

So anyway, I’m back, and a few things are on my mind nowadays.
One is, for some reason, the “man-eating wolves” that plagued (mostly) Southern France in the 18th century. The things that were “like wolves but they were not wolves”.

A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine

…is Latin and means “From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord”.
It was allegedly a litany of despair, a prayer said by every medieval church and monastery at the time of the viking raids.
This particular prayer has not been verified in exactly those words in any 9th century texts though, however an antiphony for churches dedicated to St. Vaast or St. Medard comes pretty close:

Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna.

This means “Our supreme and holy Grace, protecting us and ours, deliver us, God, from the savage race of Northmen which lays waste our realms”.

Vikings

Vikings. Known for brute force.
Vikings. How did they, in merely 300 years, manage to make such an impression on the world that a thousand years later we still talk about them?

Brute force alone does not make you successful for 300 years.
Vikings were also skilled, clever. They navigated across the sea all the way to America, they also went east, to Constantinople and many other places.
I would assume that in certain ways times have changed very little. A thousand years ago attention was surely given to the wrong-doers, as it is now. Vikings were travelers, explorers and merchants, but some were rogues and caused a heck of a lot of havoc and mayhem wherever they went. Naturally these rogue vikings were the ones people remembered.

But for vikings to have accomplished all that they did in their relatively short time, things other than brute force must have been utilized.
What things?

What we don’t see

So many creatures are reported by so many different individuals of the human population, but most sightings seem to be of something resembling a Bigfoot, a Dogman etc.
This post is not going to talk about what we see though. It’s time to talk about what we don’t see.

We have a tendency in this field to connect the modern cryptozoological sightings to ancient mythological creatures.
In the world of Dogman you often hear of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis being mentioned as some sort of reminder that these creatures have been around for a long time.
That’s all good and well, there might be a connection there.
Sometimes though I feel I must take on the role of the devil’s advocate in order to get to the core of a matter.
That core in this case is what we don’t see.
If Anubis was a Dogman, what happened to whatever races the other ancient Egyptian gods belonged to?
What happened to the race of Horus? Where are all the Hawkmen? (Not counting the ones in Flash Gordon…)
Where is the race of Sobek, the Crocodilemen?
Where are the descendants of Thoth, the Ibis Storkmen?
If we go to other mythologies we might ask why so few sightings of harpies are reported today.
Were are all the sirens? Where are the minotaurs?
Not to mention the Unicorns.

My point is this, that if we should consider some mythological beings, mustn’t we consider all?

Dimension Apprehension

Science doesn’t stand in one spot and points. Science leads.
We cannot refuse to go where science leads us, even if it’s to places we never thought we’d visit.

So many people claim that Bigfoot and Dogman and other cryptozoological beings cannot exist. They point to science as proof.
But science is no longer where it was when they were young.
Most people learn very little once they’re out of school, and when they point to science as proving the impossibility of these creature’s existence, they tend to refer to science as it was when they learned it.
When you talk about a multiverse, about parallel dimensions these people call it sci-fi, fantasies.
But it isn’t.

Reputed scientists are now more and more leaning towards the concept that we live in a multiverse. That parallel dimensions are right there, next to us, even though we may not be able to perceive them.
When science talks about parallel universes they mean real universes that exist in other dimensions.
At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland they are working on learning about these parallel universes right now.

Were is the Hyena

No I didn’t misspell were. 😉
Since the emergence of the modern werewolves/ dogmen onto the scene of cryptozoology, there have been quite a few details in reported sightings that seem to point to the creature in question being more that just wolf-like in nature.
I’m not going to address the more metaphysical features it is said to exhibit at this point,but rather its actual physical appearance,

Let’s start with its peculiar posture when running as a quadruped.
Very often we hear of it being described as having longer front legs than hind legs, resulting in a rather hyena-like profile, albeit significantly larger.
Dogmen are also often described as having a sort of mane or extra hairy ridge running from their shoulders down their spines, another feature reminiscent of hyenas.
There have also been descriptions, mostly from Southern California, about some of these creatures exhibiting somewhat feline qualities amidst their canine appearance. These creatures Linda Godfrey have dubbed Doberman-Lynxes.

Hyenas, though dog-like in appearance, are actually more closely related to felines.
Could there be part hyena in the dogman?

Dogman and ESP

Extra sensory perception.
What is it?
Well, it’s a collective name for perceiving something through one or more senses other than the usual five.
But do we really only have five regular senses? Is sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch all there is?
Well no.
Some neurologists claim we have nine senses, some say it’s more like 21.
Some senses fit within the boundaries of one of those five basic ones, such as touch, which also includes perception of pressure, heat and pain.
But then there are other recognized senses such as interoceptive ones, like  equilibrioception (balance, alignment, direction, acceleration, gravity), the organic sense (sense of internal condition such as hunger and thirst) and proprioception (perception of the position of body parts).

An interesting sense is one called magnetoception. It allows us to sense magnetic fields.
It can be used to get a sense of direction by picking up on the Earth’s magnetic field.
Birds have a particularly strong sense of magnetoception which allows them to migrate all across the world and still find their old nesting spots.
In humans this sense is not as strong though, and I personally think it even varies between individuals.