But subsequently, something important happens – there’s a shift in meaning.

Wolf-pelts and sun-eaters

In 1806, Joakim Stull, a Dubrovnik writer, gives a dictionary definition of vukodlak in which he glosses the term with upirina, a variant of vampir. The concept that used to be defined by the word vukodlak is now described using the word ala, a Turkish borrowing with the same meaning. “At the onset of an eclipse of the sun or moon, the people believe that alas are blocking it out with their wings. They begin to bite into it and want to devour it. When the sun is red in color, it is drenched with blood from an ala’s bite, and when the sun is bright, it has conquered the alas.”¹⁹ Significantly, the Ottoman Turks took control of much of the Balkans in the 15th century, and it’s no real surprise that terms jumped about and metamorphosed, considering the linguistic cooking pot of Turkish words that bubbled in the Balkans as a result of the changing political situation.

The term vukodlak thus began, very certainly, with the meaning of a mythological sun- and moon-devouring creature. This is its original mythological meaning.

Certainly by the 17th century in South Slavic, Bulgarian and Macedonian, it was used to indicate a daemon with the attributes of a vampire in English. The Serbo-Croatian term clearly does not mean werewolf.

Nowhere in this skein of meanings is there a suggestion that in Common Slavic the word ever referred to a werewolf in the English sense – and this is interesting, because the Common Slavic compound was probably *vъlkъ + dlaka (wolf-pelt wearer). This is where a number of researchers have been misled into thinking the vukodlak is a werewolf.

But then, why does the word vukodlak mean wolf-pelt, if it is not related to a werewolf? We need to examine those who inhabited the Balkans before the Slavs – that is, the Illyrians and the Thracians (including the Dacians, whose kingdom became a Roman province in A.D. 106). It’s of particular interest that the Dacians bear a totemic name: literally it means wolf. Although nothing can conclusively be proven, it was suggested by Mircea Eliade that the Dacians initiated their young warriors in a coming-of-age ritual, in which the young men would wear a wolf pelt, behave in a wolf-life and probably rapacious way, and thus become the totemic wolf in their society.

There is a fascinating reference by Herodotus to the early Slavs (or perhaps Balts and Slavs), a thousand years before they spread through the Balkans, wherein he calls them Neuri. “The Neuri share the customs of Scythia… It appears that these people practise magic; for there is a story current amongst the Scythians and the Greeks in Scythia that once a year every Neurian turns into a wolf for a few days, and then turns back into a man again. I do not believe this tale; but all the same, they tell it, and even swear to the truth of it.”²⁰ The fact that the change is on a yearly basis and occurs over several days points to a totemic ritual interpretation.