The fur of a bear resembles clothing. Like a person, a bear looks straight ahead, but the expressions of bears are not easy for us to read. Often the wide eyes of a bear suggest perplexity, making it appear that the bear is a human being whose form has mysteriously been altered. Bears, however, are generally far larger and stronger than people, so they could easily be taken for giants.

Perhaps the most wonderful characteristic of bears, however, is their ability to hibernate and then reemerge at the end of winter, which suggests death and resurrection. In part because bears give birth during hibernation, they have been associated with mothergoddesses. The descent into caverns suggests an intimacy with the earth and with vegetation, and bears are reputed to have special knowledge of herbs.

At Drachenloch, in a cave high in the Swiss Alps, skulls of the cave bear have been found that face the entrance in what appears to be a very deliberate arrangement. Some anthropologists believe this is a shrine consecrated to the bear by Neanderthals, which would make it the earliest known place of worship. Others dispute the claim; true or not, the very idea is testimony to the enormous power that the figure of the bear has over the human imagination.

A cult of the bear is widespread, almost universal, among peoples of the Far North, where the bear is both the most powerful predator and the most important food animal. Perhaps the principal example of this cult today is that followed by the Ainu, the earliest inhabitants of Japan. They traditionally adopt a young bear, raise it as a pet, and then ceremoniously sacrifice the animal. Before stories of the lion were imported, the bear was regarded throughout northern Europe as the king of beasts. Eskimo legends tell of humans learning to hunt from the polar bear. For the Inuit of Labrador, the polar bear is a form of the Great Spirit, Tuurngasuk.

Countless myths and legends record a sort of intimacy between human beings and bears. The Koreans, for example, traditionally believe that they are descended from a bear. The tiger and the female bear had watched humans from a distance, and they became curious.

As they talked together on a mountainside one day, both decided that they would like to become human. An oracle instructed them that they must first eat twenty-one cloves of garlic, then remain in a cave for one month. They both did as instructed, but after a while the tiger became restless and left the cave. The mother bear remained, and at the end of a month she emerged as a beautiful woman. The son of Heaven, Han Woon, fell in love with her and had a child with her, Tan Koon, who is the ancestor of the Koreans.

The bear was sacred to the Greek Artemis, the Roman Diana, goddess of the moon and protector of the animals. According to the Roman poet Ovid, the god Jupiter once disguised himself as Diana and raped her companion the nymph Callisto. On realizing that Callisto was pregnant, Diana banished the young girl from her presence. Eventually Callisto gave birth to a boy named Arcas. Juno, the wife of Jupiter, turned Callisto into a bear and forced her to roam the forest alone and in perpetual fear. Arcas grew to be a young man. He went hunting in the forest, saw his mother, and raised his bow to shoot her. At that moment, Jupiter looked down took pity on his former mistress and brought both mother and son up to Heaven, where they became the constellations of the great and little bear. This is only one version of the story among many, but the Arcadians traditionally trace their origin to Callisto and her son. The Hebrews, who were herders, regarded carnivorous animals as unclean, and the bear was no exception. In the Bible, the young David protected his flock against bears (1 Sam. 17:34). The bear became a scourge of God when small boys followed the prophet Elisha and made fun of his bald head. Elisha cursed them, and two she-bears came out of the woods and killed the children (2 Kings 2:23-24). According to tradition, however, Elisha was later punished with illness for his deed.

The Tlingit and many other Indian tribes on the northwest coast of the North American continent have told stories of a young woman who was lost in the woods and was befriended by a bear. At first she was afraid, but the bear was kindly and taught her the ways of the forest. Eventually she became his wife. She grew thick hair and hunted like a bear. When the couple had children, she at first tried to teach them the ways of both bears and human beings. Her human family, however, would not accept the marriage, and her brothers killed her husband, whereupon she broke completely with the ways of humans. Many tales pay tribute to the maternal role of the mother bear. Repeating a bit of lore found in the works of Pliny the Elder and other writers of antiquity, medieval bestiaries told of cubs that were completely formless at birth. Their mother would mold them with her tongue, literally licking the cubs into shape.

The mother bear must constantly protect her offspring from the father, who would eat them out of jealousy and hunger. This fierce protectiveness is part of what has moved contemporary American author Terry Tempest Williams to posit a special bond between women and bears. “We are creatures of paradox,” she wrote in an essay entitled “Undressing the Bear.” She continued, “Women and bears, two animals that are enormously unpredictable, hence our mystery” (p. 108). The name Artemis literally means “bear,” as does Arthur, derived from Artus, the name of the legendary king of Britain who led the knights of the Round Table. Such nomenclature suggests a totemic bond between man and bear that goes back to very archaic times. Many European fairy tales suggest such a bond. For example, according to the Norwegian story entitled “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” recorded by George Dasent, a bear went to the house of a poor family and asked for the daughter in marriage, promising great riches in return. The father persuaded his daughter to reluctantly agree, and the bear carried her home on his back. The bear visited the young woman every night but departed at the break of day. She lived well but was forbidden to know where her husband went every morning. Finally, one night she was overcome with curiosity and lighted a candle, only to see him vanish. Then she had to make a long and perilous journey to the land east of the sun and west of the moon, where she was finally reunited with her husband. Her love broke the enchantment of a sorceress, and he turned out to be a human prince. In another version of the tale, three sisters are talking about the men they will marry, when one says in jest, “I will have no husband but the brown bear of Norway.” So it comes to pass, but the couple is permanently united only after many trials and tribulations. These stories belong to the cycle of “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tales in which a bride must learn to see past the bestial appearance of her partner to find a gentle young man. One tale that seems to lament the loss of intimacy between bears and human beings is the Icelandic saga “King Hrolf and His Champions,” from the thirteenth or early fourteenth century. It tells how King Hrolf was drinking with his warriors when the army of Queen Skuld attacked them. Only Bothvar Bjarki, the greatest of the king’s knights, could not be found, and all thought he must have been killed or captured. As the battle raged, an enormous bear appeared at the side of King Hrolf. Weapons simply rebounded from the skin of the bear, and he killed more enemies with his paw than could any five heroes. One of King Hrolf’s champions, Hjalti the Magnanimous, ran back to camp, where he found Bothvar in a tent. Outraged, Hjalti threatened to burn the tent and Bothvar. Calmly and a bit sadly, Bothvar rebuked Hjalti, saying that he had proved his courage many times. He was ready to join the battle, Bothvar explained, but could offer his king more help by remaining behind. Indeed, as soon as Bothvar joined the fray, the bear disappeared, for Bothvar and the bear were one. King Hrolf and his champions all fought valiantly, yet they were overwhelmed by the enormous host of Queen Skuld and killed. Still another such tale is Valentine and Orson, which was popular in the Middle Ages and is preserved for us in French and English texts from around the end of the fourteenth century. The story began with the infant Orson lost in the woods. A mother bear took him home to her cave and raised him as one of her cubs. He grew up to be huge, immensely strong, covered with hair, and able to speak only in grunts. For a time, Orson was the terror of the woods, feared by both animals and human beings. When his beloved mother died, Orson let himself be taken by his brother Valentine to the court of King Pepin of France, where he learned the ways of men and became a knight. There a dreaded warrior known as the Green Knight had captured a princess and challenged to a battle anyone who wished to rescue her. Many of King Pepin’s knights took up the challenge, but the Green Knight bested them all and hung them from a tree. Finally came the turn of Orson. When he first jousted with the Green Knight, Orson inflicted several wounds, but he noticed that they healed at once. Realizing the Green Knight could not be defeated in the conventional way, Orson leaped from his horse, threw away his sword, and tore off his armor. Then Orson pulled the Green Knight from horseback and forced his adversary to yield, rescuing the princess and winning her for his bride.

In medieval times, the sport of bear baiting was very popular at country fairs. The dancing bear, clumsily mimicking a human being, was also a favorite entertainment. For all their cruelty, these symbolic affirmations of human dominance perhaps paid the bear a sort of compliment as a representative of natural powers that might inspire fear. Many aristocratic houses adopted the bear as a heraldic symbol, but perhaps resentment against a predatory nobility was taken out on the poor animals. In the medieval tales throughout Europe since the end of the eleventh century, “Bruin” the bear is an aristocrat whose natural strength is no match for the peasant cunning of Renard the Fox. Legends, however, still show a respect for the abilities and knowledge of bears. Edward Topsell, the Elizabethan zoologist, reported in 1656 that a man was walking along carrying a large cauldron one autumn day when he saw a bear nibble a root, then descend into a cave. The man was curious and started to chew on the root of the same plant. Immediately he began to feel very sleepy, and he was barely able to throw the cauldron over his body. He remembered no more until he lifted up the cauldron to find the last snow melting on a beautiful spring day.

Like all large meat-eaters, bears had become rare by the twentieth century. The terror that bears once inspired came to be remembered though a haze of nostalgia, and the teddy bear became a favorite toy of children. The name comes from a story that had President “Teddy” Roosevelt, an avid big-game hunter, declining to shoot a bear cub, thinking it unsporting to take advantage of the helpless creature. In William Faulkner’s short story “The Bear,” a giant brown bear known as Old Ben becomes the symbol of a vanishing wilderness in the American South. As long as he is there, the land remains wild and strangers do not dare to intrude. The hero of the tale is a boy who is learning to be an accomplished woodsman, an occupation that becomes obsolete when a hunting party finally kills Old Ben. No longer greatly feared, the bear has become a symbol of vulnerability. Everybody in the United States who was born before the seventies or so has seen posters with Smokey the Bear, who was created during World War II to warn people that Japanese shelling might begin a conflagration in the woods of America. When the war ended, the United States Forest Service retained Smokey as a symbol in a campaign to prevent the careless ignition of forest fires. Far from bestial, he has a rather parental image. He wears human clothes and a forester’s hat. He is mature, friendly, and a little melancholy. Yet if Smokey seems absurdly civilized, his role remains that of bears since archaic times-protector of the wild.