Goldemar

In literary tradition Goldemar appears in the Middle High German poem Goldemar (attributed to Albrecht von Kemenaten, c. 13th century) as the dwarf king who dwells in a mountain inhabited by dwarfs; the surviving poem is fragmentary and breaks off after the hero Dietrich finds dwarfs with a girl, with later prose summaries (Heldenbuch‑Prosa, Reinfrid material) naming the abducted girl Herlin and expanding elements of the episode. In popular tradition, distinct local legends (recorded in later sources) place a figure called King Goldemar as a subterranean/house spirit attached to Hardenstein castle near the Ruhr, living in intimacy with the castle lord Neveling von Hardenberg and linked to the mining landscape there. The two attestations share a name and subterranean/dwarf associations but their identity across genres is treated as plausible yet uncertain in scholarship.

The poem explicitly identifies Goldemar as a dwarf king who rules a mountain where dwarfs live, but provides only fragmentary physical description. Folk accounts call him 'King Goldemar' and treat him as a dwarf‑like subterranean house spirit able to occupy domestic space (including allegedly sleeping in the same bed as a human lord); explicit bodily details are minimal in the cited sources.

In the literary cycle, later prose traditions connected to the poem describe Goldemar as presiding over a dwarf community, abducting a princess (Herlin) and—in those expanded accounts—able to command giants until opposed by Dietrich (these expanded details derive from Heldenbuch‑Prosa and related medieval summaries rather than the surviving poem fragment). In folk tradition Goldemar is represented as an intimate household spirit: he kept close company with a named medieval lord at Hardenstein, 'played most beautifully on the harp,' and could confer good fortune while resident and apparently withdraw good luck on leaving (a note attributed to him promises the house would be as unlucky as it had been lucky once he departed). The sources also situate him conceptually amid mining and subterranean wealth, explaining his attachment to a mining castle locale.