There is a moderately-widespread notion in (amateur) English-language sources that a "bodark" is one of the words in Russian mythology/folklore referring to a werewolf.
Some examples:
- Moderately well-known video game (Ghost Recon: Future Soldier)
- Maybe the most high-profile example. Linked trailer adds a claim that a "bodark" is not just any werewolf, but also one that chooses to turn into a wolf and back of free will. This occasionally occurs in other sources too.
- The game is from 2012, and has a 2023 sequel called Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. Most results of searching for "Bodark" on reddit seem to refer to a faction in the game.
- French wikipedia page on werewolves.
- There is no reference to the term specifically, but there is one for the paragraph. The reference is, inexplicably, is... a romance novel from 2003? (Sherri L. King, Moon Lust Book 3: Mating Season, Ellora's Cave,ISBN1-84360-398-5)
- Some mythology-themed website called Monstrous
- References a book (The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865), but the line about "bodark" is absent from that book (available on Gutenberg).
- Some other mythology-themed Tumblr page
- Claims that "The Bodark is a Central Russian aka Carpathian legend of a human who changes into a wolf."
- There are more pages like the Tumblr above and Monstrous, but without any sources. I don't have enough reputation to post more links. They are easily google-eable if one searches for "bodark".
I speak Russian natively and I am pretty sure that a "bodark" is not a word in Russian at all, let alone a mythical creature. The best guesses I have are:
- that this is some kind of a creative corruption of a "бирюк" ("biryuk")- an actual word in Russian, an irano-turkic loanword. Refers to a lone wolf, but nothing about monsters/werewolves.
- that this is a corruption of "отарк" ("otark"), a hybrid man-bear creature from a 60s Soviet sci-fi story, "День гнева" ("Day of Wrath") by Sever Gansovsky
Both guesses strike me as tenuous at best.
Does anyone have any better guesses/ideas about where this word may have come from? Perhaps it is a reference to some Romanian/Gutsul/Balkan/etc mythological creature misattributed as Russian?
UPD: I've trawled the Internet Archive, and I think I've found at least two examples that are earlier than the video game.
- Unsolved: The World of the Unknown, by John Godwin, 1976. A "mystery" book, certainly not academic. Quote:
The werewolf saga, with certain variations, can be traced to every country that ever contained wolves. [...] The word werewolf comes from the old Anglo term wer for man, but the Italians have their lupo manaro; [...] the Central Asian Uzbeks, their bodark; and so on, right around the globe.
- The Story of Werewolves, by Thomas G. Aylesworth, 1978. A mythology-focused book. Quote:
Over the years, werewolf stories were told in many different countries. The word werewolf seems to come from two Anglo-Saxon words, wer and wolf. In that language, wer means man. In other countries, this man-wolf had different names. In Italy, it was the lupo manero [...] In Central Russia, it was the Bodark (BOH-dark).
Seems like a plagiarism of the Godwin book above. Maybe the author looked up that Uzbekistan was located in USSR, about in the middle of it, and called it Central Russia.
So, the earliest reference we have is a book from the 1970s, referring to Uzbek folklore. I know nothing about it, but from a quick search, it doesn't seem to bring up anything.
