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means A fictional tribe of savage, bear-skin-clad humanoid creatures who hunt and devour their victims, depicted as terrifying nocturnal predators.

from A coinage from Michael Crichton's 1976 novel 'Eaters of the Dead' (and the film adapted from it, 'The 13th Warrior'), where the Wendol are reimagined remnants of an older human lineage menacing a Norse settlement. The name echoes Old English 'Grendel,' the monster of Beowulf — fitting, since Crichton built his story as a sly retelling of that epic — and possibly nods to the 'wendigo,' the cannibal spirit of Algonquian tradition, though Crichton never spelled out the borrowing.