There is no werewolf history. At the most there are histories of werewolves, but these are fragmented and discontinuous. The werewolf is not a biological species, nor an afflicted human (although it is often mistaken for one),1 and one of the problems lies in translation; not all the ‘werewolves’ in different languages can translate into one and the same ‘werewolf’. Werewolves are cultural concepts, and thus not absolute but relative entities that are defined by their contexts. Language is one of these contexts and it cannot be assumed that, for instance, the English werewolf is similar to the French loup-garou, the German Werwolf, the Danish varulf, or the Latvian vilkatis. Nor can it be assumed that werewolves are associated with lycanthropy, a Greek term that by the second century had already become the medical term for a particular affliction. There may be some overlap between different terms, depending on the cluster of expressions of which the individual terms are part; an early cluster does not necessarily represent the ancestry of a later one. I will not attempt here to juxtapose the werewolf with male and female witches, which is only viable in the context of witch trials.2 Instead, I will restrict my analysis to werewolves and concentrate mainly on groups of texts in which the subject performs.