"Hour of the Wolf"

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I'm up at this so called "Hour of the Wolf" because of my feline companions. I was trying to think when I first heard the expression "hour of the wolf," and it must have been via Ingmar Bergman's 1968 film of the same name.

It's a reference to an old Swedish expression that refers to the hours between 3 am - 5 pm or night and dawn , "during which, it is said, most people are either born or die." (See Wikipedia - [Ingmar Bergman's ]Hour of the Wolf.

Still not very revealing, so I did a more general search and came up with an interesting reference at Linguist List - Ask A Linguist Message Details. A reader asked a similar question about the origin of the phrase, and received the following reply:

"I'm not sure this answers your question, but in French, at least as far as I know, there is no equivalent (l'heure du loup doesn't seem to exist). However, there is an expression of the time of day which is "entre chien et loup" (lit. between dog and wolf), which means that there's not enough light to distinguish between a dog and a wolf. Interestingly, the time referred to here is twilight, not early dawn. The closest equivalent in English would be 'gloaming'."