Frau Holle, Who Makes It Snow
German children are told that when it snows, Frau Holle is shaking out her feather beds. Legend says she lives at the bottom of a pond on a mountain in Hesse.
What was reported
Frau Holle, or Mother Holle, is a figure of German folklore made famous by the Brothers Grimm. In their tale, a girl falls down a well into another world and works for an old woman, shaking her feather quilts so hard that the feathers fly, and it snows on Earth. The hard-working girl is showered in gold; her lazy stepsister, in pitch.
Older beliefs made her a powerful being who rode with the Wild Hunt in winter and rewarded good spinners. A pond on the Hoher Meißner mountain, the Frau-Holle-Teich, is said to be the entrance to her world.
Explanations offered
Frau Holle may preserve an older goddess of winter and the household. She's still part of German culture, from the snow saying to the region around the Meißner, which calls itself 'Frau Holle Land'.
- When
- Told for centuries
- Where
- Hoher Meißner, Hesse, Germany
- Witnesses
- German folklore
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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