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<P align="justify"> In the Saami pre … <P align="justify"> In the Saami pre-Christian world view, the borderline between human and animal life was extremely fine and easily crossed; for example, it was finer than the distinction between male and female roles. Although the Saami belief in werewolves is connected with the general European tradition of the werewolf, the world of northern superstition offered a particularly fertile soil for it. </P>
<P align="justify"> A human being might change into a wolf either voluntarily or involuntarily. Unlike in the case of the bear ([[Animal metamorphoses|Animal metamorphoses]]), people usually changed into wolves against their wills because the wolf was considered to have a hard life, and it was generally despised. A werewolf was hated and regarded as seven times worse than an ordinary wolf. A person with magic skills might change another into a wolf, although no detailed information about the means that were used have survived. In the later tradition, it was related that shamans raised the dead from the earth in the shape of wolves. On the other hand, it was said that sometimes young men voluntarily changed themselves into wolves because it was fun to chase the reindeer over the fells.</P>
<P align="justify"> Proof of the existence of werewolves was traditionally similar to that proffered for other animal metamorphoses: usually it was a belt with a knife or a tobacco pouch that was found in the carcass of a killed beast. There were also stories of wolves that came to warm themselves by the fire at night, and which were fed with pieces of cooked meat; after they consumed human food they were once more able to assume their human forms. Later they would sometimes come to thank their rescuers at markets. On the other hand, it was related that once a werewolf had killed a reindeer and eaten raw meat it could not change back into a human being. On voluntary metamorphosis into a wolf, see [[Animal metamorphoses|Animal metamorphoses]].</P>
<P align="justify"> It is clear that the belief in werewolves sometimes led to a state of lycanthropy, in which a person really believed that he had been bewitched into a wolf and began to behave accordingly; this assumed the form of a mass hysteria in Karasjok as late as the 1920s. The belief in werewolves thus remained a living tradition well into the twentieth century. Particularly elusive and destructive reindeer-killing wolves were easily suspected of being werewolves.</P>y suspected of being werewolves.</P> +
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