Vad är smart när människa möter varg?

Abstract

This article examines stories about smart behavior when encountering wolves. The aim is to analyze such stories as narratives that (re)produce the idea of Homo Sapiens as the crown of the creation, and as a kind of narrative fixing of the border between culture (civilization) and nature. The material at hand consists of archive material, newspaper articles and a government web site with information about large predators in Finland. Despite the fact that the wolf is ascribed high intelligence, the human counterpart normally outsmarts the animal in the stories by being smarter. The physically inferior man defends himself against wolves by, for instance, using fire and iron. Thus, the idea of Man as superior to the wolf does not only rest on an ability to control the animal, but to domesticate other aspects of nature as well.