| Alternate Names: | Harke, Herke, Holda, Frau Godan, Frau Wode, Frau Freke, Friggöu, Frea |
| Iconography: | The Distaff, Waterfowl |
| Domains: | Harvest, Hearth, Prophesy, Textile Crafts, Rulership, Magic, Winter |
Historical Attestations
Attestations to the cult of Fríg are paradoxically few, and also ubiquitous in Germanic folklore, depending upon one’s point of view. The Old English name Fríg means “beloved”, and is cognate to the Low Saxon Frike, Freke, to Lombardic Frea, and to the Old Norse Frigg, the well known Queen of Asgard and wife of the Norse god Odin. It is her roles as the wife of Woden and the Queen of Heaven that allow us to posit certain correspondences with other figures known to German folklore, which almost certainly refer to this revered goddess by other titles. In Lower Saxony and today’s Netherlands, there are tales of the ancient being known as Holda, or Frau Harke, a powerful, magical figure, or of Frau Gode, whose name literally means “The Wife of Woden”. Scholars have long speculated that figures such as Holde, Herke and Frau Holle are in fact remembrances in folk lore of a powerful Germanic goddess that was a protective figure, a bringer of gifts and prosperity, and even a “Matron of Witches” who was accompanied on the Wild Hunt by a retinue of “deluded women” and the spirits of unbaptized children.
As renowned folklorist Jacob Grimm tells us in Deutsche Mythologie in 18351Grimm, J. (1835). Deutsche Mythologie.:
In popular legends and nursery-tales, frau Holda (Hulda, Holle, Hulle, frau Holl) appears as a superior being, who manifests a kind and helpful disposition towards men, and is never cross except when she notices disorder in household affairs. None of the German races appear to have cherished these oral traditions so extensively as the Hessians and Thuringians (that Worms bishop was a native of Hesse). At the same time, dame Holle is found as far as the Voigtland, past the Rhön mts in northern Franconia, in the Wetterau up to the Westerwald, and from Thuringia she crosses the frontier of Lower Saxony. Swabia, Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, North Saxony and Friesland do not know her by that name.
From what traditions has still preserved for us, we gather the following characteristics. Frau Holle is represented as a being of the sky, begirdling the earth: when it snows, she is making her bed, and the feathers of it fly. She stirs up snow, as Donar does rain: the Greeks ascribe the production of snow and rain to their Zeus: so that Holda comes before us a goddess of no mean rank. The comparison of snowflakes to feathers is very old; the Scythians pronounced the regions north of them inaccessible, because they were filled with feathers (Herod. 4, 7. conf. 31). Holda then must be able to move through the air, like dame Herke. She loves to haunt the lake and fountain; at the hour of noon she may be seen, a fair white lady, bathing in the flood and disappearing; a trait in which she resembles Nerthus. Mortals, to reach her dwelling, pass through the well; conf. the name wazzerholde.
Another point of resemblance is, that she drives about in a waggon. She has a linchpin put in it by a peasant whom she met; when he picked up the chips, they were gold. Her annual progress, which like those of Herke and Berhta, is made to fall between Christmas and Twelfth-day, when the supernatural has sway, and wild beasts like the wolf are not mentioned by their names, brings fertility to the land. Not otherwise does ‘Derk with the boar,’ that Freyr of the Netherlands (p. 214), appear to go his rounds and look after the ploughs. At the same time Holda, like Wuotan, can also ride on the winds, clothed in terror, and she, like the god, belongs to the ‘wutende heer.’
Winter, Yule and the Wild Hunt
The Wutende Heer referenced by Grimm above, is the same phenomenon known to the English speaking world as the Wild Hunt, and known to the Anglo-Saxons as the Herlaþing. Folk tradition in Germany has it that Holda, Herke or Frau Gode, depending on the locale, leads this procession along with her husband Woden. It seems quite possible that the name Harke or Herke may share an etymological connection to Herla, a by-name of Woden that connects him to the leadership of hosts by way of the Proto-Germanic word *χariaz. It seems that both Woden and his wife are seen as leaders of the Wild Hunt, either collectively or sometimes independently of one another.
Even today in Germany, there are traditions around the (Zwölf Nächte ‘Twelve Nights’), meaning the Twelve nights of Yuletide, which hold that during this time, spirits and ghosts roam freely, and only after Twelfth-Night will they return to rest. During this interval Holda is said to go abroad, bearing gifts To the deserving as the historian and linguist, Johann Georg von Eckhart, in De origine Germanorum (1750)2von, E. J. G., & Scheidt, C. L. (1750). De Origine Germanorum: Eorumque vetustissimis coloniis, migrationibus AC rebus gestis. Schmid. writes:
The common people of the Saxons honor Frau Freke, who bestows on them gifts, the same whom the nobles amongst the Saxons reckon as Holda.
Another tantalizing clue to connecting this goddess to Yuletide, comes to us from a 13th Century Cistercian monk, identified only as Rudolph, who noted the following custom in or about the year 1236 CE:
In nocte nativitatis Christi ponunt regina celi quam dominam Holdam vulgus appelat, ut eas ipsa adiuvet.
On the night of Christ’s nativity, they set the table in honour of the queen of heaven, commonly known as Holda.
Holda is associated with geese, and with the down of geese, and by extension, it seems likely she is connected in this way to the “Mother Goose” of popular fairytales. Another tradition connecting Holda with both goose-down and with Winter time, is an old folk saying that when it snows, it is a sign that Mother Holda is “shaking out her pillows”.
Finding Fríg
So, thus far, we have uncovered a powerful, pre-Christian female figure identified as the wife of Woden, and as the “Queen of Heaven”. She is a leader of the Wild Hunt, and is mentioned in connection with liminal spaces between land, and water, such as ponds and fountains, as noted above by Grimm. It is worthy of note, that in later Norse mythology, Frigga, certainly the nordic “Queen of Heaven”, dwells in a hall known as (Boggy Hall ‘Fensalir ‘), a place that scholars such as Anton Edzardi associate with a putative Germanic tradition holding that bodies of water can be entrances to the domain of the Goddess. Indeed, in other parts of modern Germany, we see fairy-tales concerning an entity known as Frau Holle, who shares many of the characteristics of Holda, and whose realm it was thought possible to enter under certain circumstances by falling or jumping into a well. A complete recounting of one such tale (which seems to have provided the basis for later stories involving Cinderella) as told by the Grimm brothers can be found online, at: http://www.authorama.com/grimms-fairy-tales-21.html
In these accounts, Holle/Holda is kindly and gracious toward children who are dutiful and industrious, but looks with disdain upon the lazy. The folk tale linked above makes clear two aspects of Frau Holle’s character that are just as often associated with Holda; first that she rewards hard work and diligence in domestic duties, (especially spinning) and second, that she protects the kindhearted and the helpful, and particularly children. It seems clear from these legends that Frau Holle is indeed a remembrance of Frau Gode or Holda. We return now to the connection between these folkloric figures, and the goddess known in Scandinavia as Frigg, the English Fríg. The well regarded Heathen scholar, Cat Heath, tells us while citing Erika Timm3Heath, C. (2014, May 25). From fairytale to goddess: Frau Holle and the scholars that try to reveal her origins. Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/3548067/From_Fairytale_To_Goddess_Frau_Holle_And_The_Scholars_That_Try_To_Reveal_Her_Origins:
However, on the other hand, there is also the question of the account of the ‘Vergōdendēl’
(“Frau Godes Portion‟) ritual that allegedly took place in several places in Lower Germany that may
provide further clues to an earlier provenance of these beings.The ‘Vergōdendēl’ ritual centres around the harvest and the felling of the final sheaf of rye, which is
decorated. When the rest of the work is done, the workers all gather around the final, decorated sheaf,
take hold of the ears of rye and shout the following three times:
“Friggöu, Friggöu, Friggöu! Dütt Jahr up’r Kare‚t andre up’n Wagen! ‚
(Friggöu, Friggöu, Friggöu! This year on the wheelbarrow, the other up on the wagon!”
The Vergōdendēl has definite parallels with the harvest practices recorded by Grimm from Lower
Saxony in which it was normal to leave an ear of corn standing in a field “to Woden, for his horse” , or
the account from Schaumburg of a field offering of drink to the cries of “Wôld, Wôld, Wôld!”
As discussed above, there seems to have been a sharing of duties between Woden and his spouse, as concerns the leadership of the Wild Hunt. Here too, we see an equivalence in function between Woden and his wife. In this case, the function is that of an agricultural divinity, granting a good growing season in the coming year, in return for a tribute involving the last sheaf of the reaping. Equally interesting is that in the account of the ritual, she is openly called Friggöu, which can only be a form of Fricka/Freke/Fríg. Grimm himself states unequivocally:
I am more and more convinced that Holda can be nothing but an epithet of the mild and ‘gracious’ Fricka; and Berhta, the shining, is identical with her too.
— Deutsche Mythologie, By J Grimm, 18351Grimm, J. (1835). Deutsche Mythologie.
The goddess and her relationship to Woden is directly attested to or alluded to, in several sources. The “Second Merseburg Charm” is a spell in Old High German, recorded in a 9th Century manuscript discovered in Fulda, Germany. The translated text can be found in the section on Woden. In it, we see Frig assisting several other gods and goddesses including Woden, in a healing charm to restore a lame horse. It would seem reasonable then to assign healing and magic to Fríg’s portfolio. Several other sources corroborate a connection between this goddess and magical knowledge of various kinds, as is born out by the legends of Holda and her train of witches, and by later Norse sources that ascribe to Frigg the power of prophesy. Indeed, in the poem Grímnismál, we read of the goddess Saga, a seeress, who drinks with Odin from golden cups in a hall named (Sökkvabekkr ‘sunken bank’) which brings to mind Frigg’s residence, Fensalir. Many modern scholars accept that in fact, Saga is another name for Frigg, and alludes to her power of foreknowledge.
Fríg is also attested in Origo Gentis Langobardorum, in which she outwits her husband, and gains his favor for her chosen tribe in a territorial dispute. (see: Woden)
From these accounts we learn that she is a goddess of wisdom and guile, and a worthy partner to Woden, exercising a sovereign function in her own right.
Ingwine Guidance
In our tradition, Fríg is a goddess of far-reaching importance. She is firstly, a goddess of the hearth and home, of love, industriousness, and domestic order. She is invoked for help in matters of motherhood and childbirth, as can be seen in the Scandinavian name for Lady’s Bedstraw (Galium verum), a plant commonly prescribed as a sedative for the mother during childbirth; Frigg’s Grass. She is said to rock children’s cradles while exhausted mothers sleep. In her guise as Holda particularly, she is known to reward hard work and to chastise the lazy, among youths especially, but not exclusively. Some tales hold that she rewards women who get their spinning done by Yule, and that no distaffs should be in use during the festival. She is sometimes said to drive a chariot pulled by rams or sheep, and in iconography is associated with the Distaff, an important tool used in spinning.
She is a goddess of the Sky and weather and is associated with snow, fog, clouds and with Winter in general. Given her connection to the Wild-Hunt, she is seen as a protector and giver of gifts during the dark months of Winter, and a custodian of the well-being of children, and of honest folk that she encounters during her winter progress. Conversely, she is also a fertility goddess, both in the sense of human fertility, and of agriculture, as we see reflected in the tradition of Vergōdendēl, discussed previously.
Finally, she is a goddess of prophesy, clarity of sight, and of magic. Folktales hold that in some regions she was referred to as the “queen of witches”, a figure of great esoteric knowledge, and one that struck catholic Germans in medieval times with great terror it would seem. She is often viewed as a feminine counterpart to Woden, a source of inspiration and hidden knowledge for women adherents in particular (historically speaking), and a being who knows much, even if she says little. It is common for Ingwine Heathens of today to call upon her for insight into that which is hidden, and for aid in matters of healing, and in reaching difficult decisions where solid information is wanting.
