=BEASTS OF BATTLE=

Germanic literature used special conventions to depict a standard scene such as the death and destruction of a battlefield. Once of these conventions was the use of the Beasts of Battle theme¹, mentioning ravens, eagles and WOLVES in order to suggest the impending carnage of the battle². These animals were well-known to the Germanic peoples as scavengers of the battle-field, and were associated in pagan times with the God of Battle and Lord of the Slain, Óðinn or Wotan³.
The most fearsome of the Beasts of Battle was the wolf, also a carrion-eater. The wolf familiars of Óðinn were named Freki and Geri, Ravener and Greed.²⁸ The Scandinavians called wolves hrægifr, "corpse-trolls," and gave the wolf "a cebtral position in Old Norse mythology and poetry, always with negative connotations."²⁹ The wolf was the very embodiment of slaughter and murder, for "whoever lost in the fight, the wolf was always the winner."³⁰ In pagan belief, the end of the world was to be a vargold, a "wolf-age," a time of "a world dominated by all kinds of evil forces,"³¹ when "brothers will battle to the bloody end, and sister's son their sib betray . . . ere the world crumbles."³² In the end, the sun and moon would be devoured by supernatural wolves, and Tyr, God of Law and War, with Óðinn, chief of all the gods, would likewise be consumed by the geratest and most fearsome wolves, Garmr and his sire Fenrir.³³
=StayWolf=