The Wolf of Gysinge (Gysingevargen)

Gysinge bruk was an ironworks village in Gästrikland, in today's Sandviken Municipality. It lies where three provinces meet. Uppland, Gästrikland and Dalarna.

Spring 1817. According to Arbetarbladet, a female wolf cub was taken from under a spruce near Gysinge. She was kept at Gysinge manor by the Bedoire family, then in a small enclosure at Hofors herrgård by Thore Petre, the 24-year-old heir to Hofors. Children reportedly struck the cage with sticks. The paper says she escaped in autumn 1820, probably during a household move. SVT, following researcher Staffan Berglind, says she was lost around Christmas 1820, when the family moved to Gästrike-Hammarby.

December 30, 1820. A boy of three named Eric, son of the soldier C. Ed, died at Dragbo in Årsunda parish. The burial register reads "Ihjälrifven af vargar." Killed by wolves. Other recorded victims included Johannes Unander, 7, at Nyby in Uppland; Pehr Persson, 6, at Kräbäck in Österfärnebo; Jan Carlsson, a six-year-old twin, at Jämtbo; Anna Jansdotter, 12, at Bastmora; Jan Erik Sundstedt, 15, at Stjärnsund by the ice of lake Grycken; Anna Persdotter, a collier's daughter, at Ysjön; and three-year-old Stina Nilsdotter, who died at Rafshyttan on 23 March 1821.

Arbetarbladet's reconstruction, drawn from church records and press reports, describes the wolf sinking its teeth into a little boy, straight across the chest, and running toward the forest edge with its prey. It shook its prey with violent force. Then it dragged the wildly screaming boy away across the ice. Most of the dead were partially consumed. Some lived, including two boys and a 9-year-old girl at Österbo, and a 9-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy in Årsunda.

On 19 March 1821, Rev. L. Backmark wrote in a parish note. "People have held that wolves never ate humans; but in 1821, from New Year to the date below, we have had sorrowful experience of it."

A large she-wolf was shot in Årsunda, but the date is uncertain. English Wikipedia gives 27 March 1821. Swedish Wikipedia gives 27 April. Arbetarbladet gives 20 April, at Nordanåker, and writes that she matched exactly the description of the animal that had ravaged the district for months. No source names the person who shot her.

The toll depends on who is counting. Linnell and colleagues, in their 2002 review The fear of wolves, give 31 attacked, 15 injured and 12 dead: 11 children and one 19-year-old woman. Swedish Wikipedia counts 9 dead. Berglind counts 11.

Evert Pousette first argued that the man-eater was the captive of 1817, in his book De människoätande vargarna. Linnell uses the case as an example of captive wolves losing their shyness of humans. Berglind puts it simply. She "connected people and food."

Not everyone accepts it. In 2016 Nya Ludvika Tidning called the captivity story speculation, folklore and myth. It rests, the paper argued, on one letter, written by Charlotta Henrietta Bedoire in 1832, eleven years later, about three cubs received from Anders Mattsson in 1817. Swedish Wikipedia adds that there is no evidence of a wolf-dog hybrid or of disease.

In December 2005, BBC Two aired "The Man-Eating Wolves of Gysinge" as the third episode of Manhunters, with Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs as the wolves. The drama shows two of them. The case sits beside the Beast of Gévaudan and the Wolf of Ansbach in the history of man-eating wolves. Swedish Wikipedia calls the 2012 death of a keeper, killed by captive wolves at Kolmården, the only wolf-caused human death in Sweden since Gysinge.