Video: Heil Dir Holle

Heil Dir Holle. A song to Frau Holle by Birgit Knorr of Kindred of the Northern Hammer, San Diego CA. The song was sung during an Urglaawe rite at Trothmoot 2013 (thetroth.org).

Hearth Cooking: An Ancient Cooking Technique Revisited

National Park Service

As this is the time when some honor the Hearth Wights and Goddesses, this seemed an appropriate link to post.

"Hearth cooking is an ancient and wonderful craft. It is the craft that stands at the center of European cuisine. With few exceptions, all recipes that originated in Europe were first created on an open hearth and only adapted comparatively recently to the modern kitchen."

Read more at Mother Earth News.

Der Grundsaudaag ("Groundhog Day")

‎"The groundhog is similar to Ratatask, the squirrel that runs up and down Yggdrasil bringing news of the nine worlds.... Braucherei reports the day as being sacred to the “Hearth Goddess,” who naturally would be Frigg. ... Akin to the second item is the creation of the Butzemann. The Butzemann is a scarecrow who is spiritually activated via a Braucherei ceremony called the Ceremony of the Corn. ... Also akin to Frigg is the cleaning of the hearth. ... Tradition holds that the first travelers with Holle and Wodan on the Furious Host (Wild Hunt) begin to return to the land at this time, if the groundhog predicts an early end to winter."  The full text of this blog entry on how practitioners of Urglaawe ("the original faith") observe the day known to many other Heathens as Disting, to Celtic Recons and Wiccans as Imbolc, and to most Americans as Groundhog Day may be found here at the Urglawwe blog site.

Frau Holle: In the Marchen and Beyond

"Known internationally  through the  Aarne-Thompson  Tale Type  Index as AT-480, and also known in the  fairy tale world of the  Grimm Brothers  as Frau Holle, the fairy tale Frau Holle is arguably  one of the most well  known tales  in all  of Germany.  How is the figure Frau Holle in the  Grimm  Brothers'  fairy tale the same  as the  figure  Frau Holle in Germanic mythology and  what is the relationship between the two?"

The full PDF of this Master's thesis by Kerby Lynne Boschee, originally submitted at California State University, Sacramento, in 2009, may be viewed here.

The Winter Goddess: Percht, Holda, and Related Figures

Article by Lotte Motz which first appeared in Folklore (vol. 95:ii,  1984):

"The figures under discussion appear under two  main designations: Frau Holle, especially prominent in Hesse and Thuringia, and Frau Perchta who belongs, above all, to the Alpine regions. Various other names have also been  recorded, such as Stampa, Rupfa, Luzie, Frau Frie, or Frau Gode."

A PDF of the complete article is available at Winterscapes.

Frau Holle movie on YouTube

This is a West German 1961 film adaptation of the German fairy tale, directed by Peter Podehl and starring Lucie Englisch in the title role. Sorry, there are no subtitles, although an English dubbed version was released in the US in 1968 under the title, "Mother Holly," and may be available on DVD. Another version was filmed in East Germany in 1963. The Brothers Grimm version of this fairy tale, in English, can be found here and may help non-German speakers follow the film. The film's IMDB page provides some additional information.

YouTube: Goddess Frau Holle

Yes, I know how some Heathens, especially hard Reconstructionists,  feel about Thunder Wizard's stuff as a whole, but still found the video to be an interesting take on Frau Holle:

Lady of the Elves: The Great Germanic Goddess

Frau Holle, or Berchta, and her train.
Harper's New Monthly, December 1873,
artist unknown. Wikimedia  Commons.

Courtesy of Medievalists.net:

"The prominent goddess of Europe was known in Germany as Berchta and Holda, who appear as goddesses of the bright and the gloomy. These pairings might be represented as Berchta and Holda, Frigg and Hel, and Freyia and Hyndla. The bright goddess arose as a goddess of the sun and sky and the gloomy one appeared as representative of the earth and underworld, but with Berchta and Holda they encompass both aspects and were largely interchangeable. She received the souls of the dead who rode along the path of the Milky Way in a wagon to the underworld. As ‘lady of the elves’ or ‘queen of the fairies’ the huldren, elves, and dwarfs, thought to be spirits of the dead, would appear with her on earth from time to time."  The full article by Timothy J. Stephany may be read on the Rochester Institute of Technology's website.