Category: Brothers Grimm fairytales / Germanic mythology and folklore
Frau Holle is a well-known name in the German world. Lady Holle or Mother Holle is actually many things – a tale, a folkloric figure, and a possible goddess behind it.
But before all, “Frau Holle” is a fairytale of the Brothers Grimm. It belongs to the ATU type 480, “The Kind and Unkind Girls”, and is thus similar to the French’s “Diamonds and Toads” or the Russian “Father Frost”. The story goes as such:
Once upon a time there was a widow who had two daughters. One was her biological daughter, and her favorite, as well as a lazy and ugly girl. The other was her step-daughter, that she disliked and forced to do all the chores in the house - she notably forced the girl to spin and spin threads every day untl her fingers bled. One day, as the shuttle was stained with her blood, she tried to clean it up in the waters of the house’s well, but she dropped the shuttle at the bottom of the well. She ran crying to her stepmother, telling her of what had happened, but she was just scolded and the widow told her to fetch back the shuttle.
So the girl, not knowing what to do and filled with sorrow, decided to jump at the bottom of the well. But as it turns out, by doing so she ended up in a flowery meadow under the sun. Exploring the place she found a baker’s oven filled with bread, and the bread started talking! (Don’t be weirded out, because this place is an LSD trip). The bread begged her to take it out before it burned. The girl did so, and then discovered an apple tree that also begged her to take its apples out of its branches before they went over-ripe. Finally she reached a little house in which lived an old woman. The girl was quite frightened because the woman had large, big teeth, but as she was about to run away, the old woman offered the girl to stay at her house and be well-taken care of, in exchange of her doing all of the housework. She notably asked her to take care of her bed very well, and to shake it thoroughly each day until the feathers fly out. Why? Because doing so caused snowing in the girl’s own world: the old woman revealed herself to be Frau Holle/Mother Holle.
Ad so the girl agreed to stay some times with the old woman, who despite her frightening appearance was very kind. She did a perfect housework for her, and ever day shook the bed of Frau Holle vigorously until the feathers flew out - and the feathers then turned into snow-flakes. In exchange, Frau Holle was pleasant with her, never got angry, and gave her boiled or roasted meat every day. But after some times the girl grew sand homesick - and while she was much better treated here, she realized that she would feel much better in her actual home. So she asked Frau Holle to return home, and Frau Holle said she was so pleased with her work she agreed to it. So she took her by the hand to a large door, and as soon as the door was opened a shower of gold fell upon the girl, the gold sticking to her and covering her - a reward for being so industrious. Plus, Frau Holle gave her back the shuttle that had fallen in the wall. And once the door was closed, the girl found herself back to her stepmother/mother’s house.
When the mother heard about her step-daughter’s adventures and saw all the gold covering her, she immediately wished a similar fate for her biological daughter and sent her to spin near the well, to recreate the exact conditions of the adventure. But the girl, too lazy to spin until her fingers bled, rather struck her hand in a thorn bush before throwing her shuttle and jumping after it. She ended up in the same beautiful meadow, but the lazy girl refused to help the bread or the apple-tree, refusing to dirty or hurt herself. She was then hired by Frau Holle in similar conditions to her sister’s, and while at first she worked well (motivated by the reward of gold), soon her lazy nature returned and she did a sloppy work - she especially forgot to shake Frau Holle’s bed. Frau Holle soon became tired of this lazy girl that wouldn’t even wake up in the morning, and she decided to send her back to her world.
The girl was quite happy, as she thought it meant she would have her shower of gold - but when she arrived to the great door, instead of a shower of gold, the girl received a kettleful of pitch as a “reward”.
And it is said that, while the girl returned home, she could never wash away the pitch, that stuck to her all of her life.
Thus ends the Brother Grimm’s “Frau Holle”, also variously spelled or translated as “Mother Holle”, “Mother Hulda” or “Old Mother Frost”.
The similarities with Perrault’s own “Diamonds and Toads” story becomes more striking when you realize the Frau Holle stories has a variation where the industrious girl is rewarded with a gold coin slipping out of her lips every time she speaks ; and the lazy girl with a toad escaping her mouth for each sentence.
What is however truly unique to this version is the presence of “Frau Holle”, who is a truly purely Germanic characters. The Grimms of course noticed that “Frau Hulda” was also present in other traditions - for example they noted that the expression “Hulda is making her bed” was said when it began snowing, and they linked it to their own tale. And, in their study of Germanic folklore and their reconstruction of Germanic mythology, the brothers agreed that Frau Holle was actually a pre-Christian deity of the old pagan Germany, that survived in folklore and fairy tales.
Now, the theories and researches and reconstructions of the “goddess Frau Holle” are numerous: they were done by several different people, across two centuries, and sometimes contradict each other, especially since this entire goddess is just a reconstruction. It is the same way dinosaurs were recreated with their bones - one same dinosaur can be depicted in wildly different ways depending on the era you look at. So to spare you all the tedious details, I will simply recap here some important points to paint a “portrait” of this Germanic goddess.
The goddess that birthed Frau Holle is commonly named Holle, Holla, Holda or Hulda. She is identified with another attested folkloric figure of Germany, Perchta/Berchta - it is commonly recognized that Perchta/Berchta is a regional variation of Holle/Holda, a sort of cultural cousin: Frau Berchta is mostly present in western and southern Germanic regions, while Holle was located in the more eastern and northern Germanic lands.
As the key element of the story points out, Frau Holle/Frau Holda was a goddess of winter, responsible for the weather of this season: common expressions said that the snow was feathers from Holda’s bed ; that fog was smoke coming from her fireplace ; and that thunder was the sound of her reeling her flax. Her festival was traditionally hold in the middle of the winter - usually over the course of the Twelve Nights of Christmas, which was originally known as “Zwölften”, the “Twelve” in the Pre-Germanic calendar. Similarly, Holda is traditionally described in two different forms representing the two sides of winter: either she is a beautiful young maiden in a white robe, as white as snow ; either she is a crooked, ugly old woman (as a traditional “winter hag”).
Holle/Holda is also strongly associated with spinning (as the story points out). It is said she taught humans how to make linen out of flax, and given that spinning is the most iconic woman craft, she might have been a patron of all womanly crafts. It is usually forbidden to spin during the Twelve Nights ; and it is said that either on Christmas Eve or the Twelfth Night she visited household and checked the quality of women’s spinning work. She rewarded industrious weavers (and sometimes finished their work for them), but punished lazy ones. A local tradition reverse the Twelve Days prohibition of spinning: on the contrary, women were supposed to place as much flax on their spindles as they could on Christmas Eve, because then Holda would visit and offer “as many good years” as there are threads on the spindle ; but she would return on the Epiphany, and if women hadn’t finished spinning all the flax, she would offer “as many bad years as there are threads”.
Called alternatively the “Dark Grandmother” or “The White Lady”, Holda was connected with bodies of water, said to live at the bottom of wells, bathe in fountains or haunt lakes - but she also was said to road across the land on a wagon - sometimes she wll ask a peasant for help, to repair her wagon, and once the task is done she will pay him with wooden chips. If the peasant is wise enough to keep them, the chips will become gold. She was also a protectress of children, who was notoriously said to receive the spirits of dead infants. When a babe died before being baptized, or is unborn, its spirit joined Holda/Berchta’s cohort ; some said that she was the one who sent the spirits of babies into the world, through a magical pool, and that bathing in her sacred waters would make a girl a fertile mother ; but in a grim irony and sinister display of divine duality, it was said that the sacred tree of Holda was the juniper, used traditionally in old Germany as an abortive.
Another variation of the legend rather has her be a mistress of ghosts in general, as the female leader of the Wild Hunt: this alternate version of her is called Frau Gaue, Frau Gode, or Frau Woden. The later name clearly identifies her as a female version of Woden/Wotan/Odin, the traditional god-leader of the Wild Hunt. his lead the Grimm to believe that Holle might be derived from Frigg, Odin’s wife in Norse mythology, a goddess also associated with women, children and weaving. Holle’s connection to the dead also seems to have manifested in the superstitions of the Twelve Days/Twelve Nights, as it was said that during this “time between two years” the dead were allowed to return to the living.
This is all however just the “first part” of this figure’s history, a reconstruction of what the original pagan goddess might have been.
Because you see, before becoming a folkloric fairytale character, Frau Holle was already reinvented… by the Church. When Germany was Christianized, Frau Holle was reinvented as a negative character, demonized and devilized. She became a leader of female nocturnal spirits for some ; or the mistress of witches and demons for others. Her followers were the “Hulden”: sometimes evil spirits taking human female shapes, other times human witches who projected their spirit through the sky when they fell asleep. The Hulden would gather around Frau Holle in the night sky, and have there either great feasts or epic battles - and the Church equated this figure with other supposed “witch leader” or “goddesses of witches” - for example the Roman goddess Diana, who was said to be the mistress of Italian witches ; or Herodias, who was said to be an undead Biblical witch leading a hellish version of the Wild Hunt… But the Germanic Holda kept her specific characteristic - notably, the witches that served her were said to ride on the sky sitting on distaffs instead of brooms. During the Germanic witch hunts, some accused confessed to have taken part to the Wild Hunt of Frau Holda, while Renaissance writers liked describe her as the leader of dangerous “sickle-wielding” maenads, and clergyman complained of how the old superstition of leaving meats and drinks for her, or her wild hunt, survived.
However, what is also fascinating is that the Church didn’t just demonized Frau Holle. You see, what the Church did was break the myth of Holle/Holda into two. The most “pagan” part was demonized as a nocturnal witch ; but the other part was re-absorbed into the Christian religion. Because you see… Holda was also called “The Queen of Heavens”. And this title made churchmen think they could have her be absorbed within the figure of the Virgin Mary. For example, the old Germanic tradition had families prepare a meal for Frau Holda on Christmas night, in order to gain her favors or obtain her help. The Church allowed this tradition to continue… but they simply pointed out that the real name of this “Queen of Heavens” this meal was offered to was “Mary”.
Another key element of the “Frau Holle” investigation is the Hulder.
The Hulder (an huldra in singular) is a supernatural species part of Norwegian folklore, seductive magical women of the woods - but they are found all other Scandinavian countries, under different names. The similarity in name has led people to link Frau Holle/Holda/Hulda with the hulder/huldra. But this is not attested - rather the hulder are more directly tied to a figure of Norse mythology: Huld. She was a völva (a witch/seer, a practicioner of the seidr - see my post in “Magical Summer”), as well as a lover of Odin.
Is Huld another cultural cousin of Holda?
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