Mythology of The Witcher - The Wild Hunt - European - Extra Mythology

myths are not stories that are untrue rather they are tales that don't fit neatly into the historical record which serve as a foundation to a culture heck [Music] today we're going to be doing something a little bit different around the campfire here at extra credits we love games just as much as we love mythology as we were playing through the witcher 3 again it dawned on us how much richer the game is if you understand the symbolism behind the myths it draws upon and that's true of so many games there's so many times when pop culture uses mythology to deliver subtext or uses mythological figures as metaphors to shine a light on what creators are trying to say so today we're gonna dive right into that and talk about the myth of the wild hunt what is it what does it mean and why was it chosen as the central piece of the witcher 3 now before we dive in just know that this episode will include lore spoilers for the game so if you still haven't played all the way through feel free to come back in around 80 hours we'll still be here it's no secret that the mythology of the witcher is highly influenced by real world myths the game's publisher the polish company cd projekt red and their main writer marcin blaha has been very open about how traditional slavic myth has influenced the game and one of the central myths in the third title is the titular wild hunt wild hunt folklore appears in a lot of places including germany england and scandinavia but in the witcher verse tales of the wild hunt are found almost everywhere the war-torn common folk describe the wild hunt as a cavalcade of wraiths who gallop across the sky on undead horses but if you dig deeper into the origins of these spirits you'll find that they aren't spirits at all but rather elves in the year 2230 br in the witcher verse equivalent to bce in our world the only intelligent beings in the land were the dwarves but then the elves sailed to the continent in white ships fleeing catastrophe in their own realm those elves were a unified people until dimensional portals sprang up across the world in an event known as the conjunction of the spheres this conjunction transported all manner of otherworldly beings into the elves and dwarves world ghouls vampires and worst of all humans we don't know what happened to the original human world but it's rumored that they brought destruction upon themselves before fleeing through the portals the humans were especially dangerous as they could harness the magic of the chaos which was a thing so to escape this newly shared world some of the elves went through the portals themselves and they became known as the older folk they arrived on a new planet this time only inhabited by humans and unicorns and proceeded to drive the human population to extinction however the unicorns were more difficult to exterminate and therefore were subjugated instead then after the elves carved a civilization out of this world they eventually saw the folly of eradicating all of the humans because they felt certain tasks were just beneath them and while unicorns might pull carts and transport riders they simply were not as let's say handy as humans so the alder folk forced the unicorns to open the gate portals between worlds allowing them to traverse the universe like they did during the conjunction and now with access to all of the gates oberon the king of the elves created a cavalry unit known as the red riders and they had but one goal to travel the universe and enslave humans you know that actually sounds a lot like the mind flayers and d and d making a note here to explore that mythology someday as well but anyway as the red riders began to raid the world hunting for captives tales of a ghostly wild band of human hunters began to spread across the land now if we jump back to our real life universe we have a very similar myth though admittedly with slightly less unicorns and magic portals but i digress while the details vary from culture to culture there are a few common threads the wild hunt manifests as a ghostly hunting party that whips across the winter night sky bringing snow and storms with them frightening and back these hunters sometimes depicted as phantoms or ghosts sometimes as flesh and blood humans and sometimes as undead ride black horses and are accompanied by a pack of hunting dogs who bark and bay and ecstasy if you're out alone at night and you hear the sounds of otherworldly hounds and hoof beats you'd better hope you see them first and hide because if they spot you they will carry you away never to return in medieval england it was believed that witches could join the wild hunt voluntarily sending their souls flying with the cavalcade while their bodies lay sleeping peacefully in bed the wild hunt may also invade your town or even your own home stealing your food and wreaking havoc to protect themselves some people would carry bread with them as they made their way to church for yule believing that if they encountered the hunt they might toss the bread to the dogs and buy time for their escape there the hunt is known as the terrifying ride though in the middle ages in germany they were known as odin's army and that makes a lot of sense odin is not just the norse god of the dead but also the god of battle ecstatic trance frenzy and holds a close association with yule and the winter month this association is so strong that the myth of the wild hunt itself has persisted in scandinavia for centuries even after christianity became the dominant religion so why out of all mythologies did the writers of the witcher choose this myth why summon the wild hunt not to fill the vacuum of the ancient yuletide sky but rather as a foil to the game's protagonists the answer is war the wild hunt is an omen of war and the witcher 3 is very much a war story dead bodies litter the ground of the northern kingdoms nilfgaardians and northerners alike people hang from trees refugees cower in hovels and soldiers patrol the roads as you ride by gallop a little further though and you come across peasants tending their fields children playing mothers washing clothes perhaps while a plume of smoke blossoms on the horizon from a village that wasn't so lucky war in the witcher is both omnipresent and also always lurking in the shadows and this combined terror is exactly what the wild hunt represents by exploring this myth's origins you can glean an even deeper understanding into the narrative of the witcher how its world reacts to these spectral riders and why geralt is determined to ensure siri does not succumb to the wild hunt thanks so much for indulging us this week and if you liked our hybrid tale and would like to see more pop culture myths and their real life counterparts explored toss a coin to your narrator in the comments and i'll see what i can do [Music] legendary patron roll call ahmed ziad turk alicia bramble casey muestia dominic valenciana gunner clovis kyle murgatroyd and o'reel's one thank you so much [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow

Channel: Extra History

Views: 282,531

Keywords: extra credits, extra mythology, extra credits mythology, witcher 3, the witcher 3, the witcher 3 wild hunt, witcher 3 slavic mythology, witcher 3 mythology, cd projekt red, wild hunt, home learning, norse mythology

Id: eRdbUdg6kms

Length: 7min 30sec (450 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020