Across the folklore of Germanic-speaking and neighboring Europe, storytellers describe a spectral host, sometimes of huntsmen and baying hounds pursuing a supernatural quarry, sometimes of the restless dead on horseback, that rides through the night sky or along remote roads, most often around Yule and the Twelve Days of Christmas or during violent winter storms. Hearing the host's horns and hounds approach was widely taken as a warning to lie face down and avoid its gaze, since being swept along with it, addressed by it, or simply seen by it could bring death, madness, or at best a run of bad luck.
Who leads the Hunt changes from valley to valley. In Norway and parts of Scandinavia it is the Oskoreia or Asgardsreia, often associated with Odin. In Wodan-derived German folklore it may be called Wode's army, while English tradition instead often names Herne the Hunter, an antlered ghost said to haunt Windsor Forest. In the twelfth-century Latin work De Nugis Curialium, Walter Map records a version led by the legendary King Herla, cursed to ride forever after outstaying his welcome in a fairy kingdom. In parts of southern Germany and Austria, the leader is instead the female figure Frau Holda or Perchta, escorting a host of unbaptized dead.