Witte Wiwer

No single cosmogonic creation myth is recorded in the provided sources; rather, the witte Wiwer are presented as a longstanding layer of local supernatural beings in Low and north German folk belief. Regional accounts place their dwellings in the earth and liminal natural features: under shrubs and the roots of old trees, in small hills and forest clearings, beneath cow stables (in parts of Mecklenburg), in pits with clear fountains surrounded by groves (the Wittewiwerskule in Westphalia), in caves with doors, in mountains, and—on Rügen—using subterranean tunnels to traverse the landscape. They are treated as indigenous, place-attached female entities whose presence is signaled by connected natural features (for example an oak tied to the witte Wiwer of Mönchgut that withered when they were driven away and whose future sprouting they prophesied).

Sources describe the witte Wiwer as women-like supernatural beings rather than giving detailed, consistent physical descriptions. Narrative details indicate they can appear with long, flying hair when fleeing the wild hunt and are sometimes described as unkempt, unwashed, and sweaty in the context of pursuit. Otherwise they are referenced generically as 'women' of the supernatural sort (Low German: witte Wiwer, singular witt Wif or weißes Weib).

The witte Wiwer are musical and social: they 'play merry music and have very fine voices.' They participate in domestic reciprocity by asking to borrow the household brewing copper every new moon during the twilight hour; if granted they take it unseen and return it three evenings later at the same hour filled with cans of beer brewed by them as payment, and they may request sweet porridge at weddings. They enact changeling abductions, exchanging unbaptized newborn children for changelings (Wechselbälge) when no light burns beside the cradle at night. They may abduct women just out of childbed and bring them to their dwellings, threatening to wring the woman's neck if she attempts to leave. In Rügen accounts they use subterranean tunnels to move between places. They are also connected to the wild hunt, from which they flee with flying hair and may be captured by a female wild huntswoman (de oll Fru Waur). Finally, they have prophetic associations tied to particular trees, as when the Mönchgut witte Wiwer prophesied their return when a withered oak should sprout again.