Weaving Resistance, Weaving Worlds

Story Information

 

 

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The stories below- real, wondrous, and everything in between - were woven together for the Weaving Resistance, Weaving Worlds performance in 2025.​​​

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Text by Nadin Hadi and Joanna Gilar

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Frau Holle

Reforged and performed by Sara McFarland 

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Frau Holle is a German story. Holle, also known as Berchta, Perhta, Hel, Holda and Hulda is a winter goddess, a weather goddess, with white hair and iron teeth. She taught women how to spin flax, she tends the dead and sends new souls out into the world to be born. She lives where it is always summer, where apples grow, bread bakes in oven, and if you shake her bedsheets, snow falls in our world. 

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The name Perchta, Berchta, Percht, Bercht comes from the old high German “beraht”, of the Old German “behrt” and of the root “berhto-”, which is tied to the French “brilliant” and the English “brilliant” – making her the bright one, the brilliant one. She’s associated with the winter solstice and rides the winter hunt, the wild hunt and is thought to call women out into the night to ride on distaffs through the sky.

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Sara's telling, freely available online, is a queer narration, celebrating fluidity and transformation. It speaks of the power of Frau Holle to welcome all-bodied folks who travel through the borderlands and seek initiation into Holda's Otherland. 

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The Three Spindles

Performed by Nadin Hadi / Joanna Gilar

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The Three Spindles is a little-known moss-spinning story from Bavaria. It is a

story collected by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth in the 19th century; a story of healing and resilience, imbued with the tenderness and power of moss. His story recordings were lost for many years, but refound and published in a wonderful collection, The Turnip Princess, in 2015.

 

The Nettle Spinner 

Performed by Stacia Keogh, Siân Jones and Joanna Gilar

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The Nettle Spinner is a Flemish fairytale collected by Charles Deulin in 1874. In contrast to the better known "Nettle Spinner" in which a girl must spin to release her brothers from birds, this is a little known tale about the power of resistance and transformation which flows through the nettle thread.

 

Old One Weaving

Performed by Siân Jones 

 

Old One Weaving is a story found across the world. It most likely originates from Turtle Island, and was told by Jenny Leading Cloud (White River, Rosebud reservation, SD) to Richard Erdoes in 1967 and is featured in “American Indian Myths and Legends”. Old One and Trickster Crow has echoes of a version told by Sharon Blackie in The Enchanted Life, 2015.

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Land Defender Stories

Shared by Kerima Mohideen

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We weave into this performance the real life stories of Roberta Blackgoat, a Native American activist and writer, Máxima Acuña, a Peruvian farmer and environmentalist, and Ranong Kongsaen, a Thai environmental activist and co-founder of the Radical Grandma Collective. These stories are brought into the space by Kerima Mohideen, who learnt of them through her education work at London Mining Network, a small charity that supports communities around the world who are protecting their land from the threat of harm by big mining companies.

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Our performances have raised money for Ranong Kongsaen's Radical Grandma Collective, an international and intergenerational solidarity effort supporting environmental justice activists in Northeast Thailand. To support RadGram, you can donate here.

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