To expand a little, you can stay inside your house/lodge/viking hall and wait for the timer to run down; step outside your abode and duke it out with the wolves,; or run for your life outside your base, as you did. Hiding in your ben and waiting out the event has the disadvantage of leaving your base structures at the mercy of the wolves. Duking it out with the wolves has the disadvantage of dying if you can't handle the whole mob. Leaving the base has the disadvantage of stopping the event duration timer.

I prefer to step outside the house, fight as long as I believe I safely can, and the step back inside the house to recover health and stamina and repair my gear. The nstep outside again.
If the fight takes me away from the house, I will leave the base to recover health and stamina. I may have to run like hell to ditch pursuers but that is better than dying. I will return to fight again as soon as I can. (Got to restart the event timer.)

I have four doors in my house and three gates in my base wall to facilitate coming and going. Another caveat: shut the door behind you when leaving the house. If you get killed, you don't want to share your respawn bed with White Fang and his pack.