I feel like wolves are naturally a very dangerous adversary. Especially ones inside an alternate dimension Viking purgatory. And they seem more like dire wolves.

I've somehow been able to play through the entire game both solo and in groups several times. This is all despite the overwhelming presence of wolves.

Please leave the wolves alone.

Wut ?
If u cant with them , tame them lol
Anyway are the mobs that most suffer of stagg , you can stun them for like 3 secs with iron buckler or hit them hard that is not difficult
And you sounds like fight them with troll armor , there is more armors above :) , try them
Or are you talking about wolves event ?
Use bonemass power and iron sledge , wolves got into puppies with that

Once you tame them, they can be quite good at defending your stuff. Just tame a couple, put some meat on the ground, and they will breed like crazy. Then in no time, you would have an army of fuzzy defenders around your base.

Alas, they also constantly howl... AWOOOO all the time...

Played through twice, honestly thought the wolves were pretty easy.
Why you say arrows are useless us word, I kill them with my bow all the time. Also block with my shield. Sounds like you need to upgrade your equip, or as the kids say git gud.

Multiple wolves can be problematic when they are starred but a single wolf or two without stars is easy to deal with, especially with a fully upgraded iron mace, which you likely have for bonemass and i'm still carrying mine with me. I do admit that if you get to the point of being staggered then you are screwed with no way to recover because of the wolf attack speed. So best is to avoid that situation.

One way to avoid that is to find the higher ground and alternate between heights then shoot arrows because their AI is pretty bad. You can dig trenches too to make it easy to fight them or go hide or sit on stone structures which always spawn in the mountains. But if it's a single wolf (or two) wait for them to come at you and backpedal a bit then smash them until staggered and finish them off.