The Oldenburg Wonder Horn and the White Maiden

Otto of Oldenburg was a passionate huntsman. On the twentieth of July of that year he rode out with a great retinue of noblemen and servants to seek out the game in the forest called Bernefeuer. The day promised well, with full packs of hounds and fresh tracks in the sand. When the count himself chased a roe deer, he pursued it so far and so fiercely that he lost his entire hunting party out of sight and hearing, from the Bernefeuer wood all the way to the Osenberg.

There he stood suddenly alone, on his white horse, in the middle of the bare sandy hill. He looked about for his hounds, but heard not a single one baying, and no hunting horn answered him. The midday sun burned fiercely on the open ground, and his thirst grew so strong that the count cried aloud, half to himself: ah God, if only I had a cool draught of water. Scarcely had he spoken the words when the hill itself gave him an answer.

Before his eyes the Osenberg opened, and from the cleft stepped a beautiful maiden, richly dressed, her hair parted over her shoulders and a small garland upon her head. In her hand she carried a costly silver vessel, gilded and cunningly wrought in the shape of a hunting horn, and it was filled to the brim. She held out the horn to him and kindly asked that he drink from it to refresh himself.

The count took it, lifted the lid and looked inside. He shook it a little, but the drink did not please him, and he refused. Drink, upon my faith, said the maiden, it will do you no harm but will turn to your good. If you drink, it will go well with you and yours and the whole House of Oldenburg, and your land will grow and prosper. If you do not drink, then never again will there be concord in your line.

But Otto paid no heed to her words. He kept the horn in his hand, swung it behind him and poured it out. A few drops splashed on the white horse, and where it grew wet the hair fell away as though it had been burned off. When the maiden saw this, she demanded her horn back, but the count gave his horse the spurs and hurried down the hill. When he looked round once more, he saw her passing back into the mountain.

Shaken, Otto reached his servants again. He told them the wondrous event, showed them the silver horn and took it with him to Oldenburg. Because he had come by it in so marvellous a way, he ordered that it be kept forever as a precious treasure within his family. Generation after generation the horn remained the pride of the counts of Oldenburg.

When Count Anton Günther died childless in 1667, Oldenburg passed by inheritance to the Danish branch of the house, and the horn travelled with it to Copenhagen. Since 1824 it has stood at Rosenborg Castle, among the treasures of the Danish crown. Scholars have since established that the piece is in truth far younger than the legend suggests: it is almost certainly a Cologne goldsmith’s work from around 1474.

That makes the story no less alive. In the Landesmuseum in Oldenburg stands a faithful copy of 1863, so that the town can show its most famous heirloom after all. And in the Osenberge a monument to the Feemöhme, the maiden from the hill, still recalls the spot where, tradition says, she stepped forth from the sand.