Holda- Germanic GodDeity"The Gracious One"

Frau Holle

The most famous story of Holda comes from the Grimm brothers' fairy tale "Frau Holle" (KHM 24), collected in Hesse in the early nineteenth century. A widow has two daughters: one industrious, the other lazy. The good girl falls into a well while retrieving a spindle dropped with blood-pricked fingers and awakens in a sunlit meadow in another world.

Along her path she pulls ripe bread from an oven and shakes ripe apples from a tree. At last she reaches Frau Holle's house and enters her service, making her bed each morning. Each time she shakes the featherbed, snow falls on the earth above. After faithful service, the girl asks to return home. Frau Holle leads her to a gate, and as she passes through, gold rains down upon her. The lazy daughter, sent by her greedy mother to acquire similar riches, refuses every task and serves Frau Holle poorly. When she passes through the gate, pitch covers her and clings to her for the rest of her life.

The Twelve Nights

Holda inspects households during the Twelve Nights between Christmas and Epiphany. Spinning must be finished before this period begins. Women who leave their flax on the distaff risk finding it tangled or destroyed. Those who have spun well receive gifts of flax or gold. Those who have not face her anger.

On her feast night, the traditional meal is fish and dumplings. Those who eat the wrong food risk having their bellies slit open and stuffed with straw.

Burchard of Worms, writing around 1008, recorded the earliest written evidence of her cult. His penitential text asks whether the penitent believes in women who ride out at night with "a crowd of demons transformed into the likeness of women" led by a figure whom "the foolish call Holda." The bishop wrote to condemn. The name survived anyway.

The Wild Hunt

In central and southern German folklore, Holda leads the Wild Hunt through the winter sky. Her procession, called Frau Holles Heer, rides during the Twelve Nights when the boundary between worlds thins. The cavalcade includes the souls of women who died in childbirth and children who died unbaptized. It was dangerous to be caught outside when the Hunt rode past. Offerings of food and drink left out for it could bring blessings.

The Well and the Hill

Children were said to come from Holda's well. In folk belief from Hesse and Thuringia, the souls of the unborn waited in her waters until she brought them into the world. The Holleteich, Holda's pond near Hörselberg in Thuringia, was the best known of these sites. Local tradition held that Holda herself dwelt beneath the Hörselberg, a limestone hill near Eisenach later conflated with the Venusberg of the Tannhäuser legend.

In the Grimm tale, the good girl enters Holda's realm through a well. Certain ponds and springs across central Germany bore her name and were regarded as entries to her domain.