The wulver appears on many folklore lists as a Shetland werewolf of a friendly kind. In Saxby's account he has a wolf's head on a man's body with short brown hair, lives in a cave dug in a steep knowe halfway up a hill, harms no one unless harmed, fishes from a rock called the Wulver's Stane and leaves a few fish on the sill of a poor home.
The Shetland Museum and Archives treats it as Saxby's invention. Jakob Jakobsen's place-name study, issued in 1901, had traced Wol- names across Shetland to Old Norse alf, fairy, and hol, hill. They include Wolvhul and Wolwul in Delting, Wolewul in Weisdale, Wolhul in Fladdabister and Wolver's Hool in Mid Yell, all meaning fairy hill. John Spence read one Delting site correctly in 1905 as the Fairy Knowe. Saxby, the Museum says, rejected that reading, fabricated a creature, and called her own home Wulvershool. The Museum concludes that no authentic Shetland wulver tradition exists before 1930.
The wulver is kept here with a disputed label, because it is widely repeated and people look for it, but it should not be taken as old lore. The pin is at Mid Yell, where one of the hill names is recorded.
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