It is situated in the north of the Harz mountain range and east of the Harly Forest on the Oker River near its confluence with the Radau, about 10 km (6.2 mi) northeast of the Goslar town centre.

The Harlyberg hill (256m/840 ft) north of the town was the site of a castle built in 1203 by the Welf king Otto IV of Germany to threaten the trade route to Goslar, as its citizens supported his Hohenstaufen rival Duke Philip of Swabia.

In 1174 the Counts of Wohldenberg established a Benedictine monastery at their ancestral seat west of Vienenburg, which converted into a Cistercian nunnery a few years later, confirmed by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1188 and by Pope Honorius III in a 1216 deed.

The abbey affiliated to the Bishopric of Hildesheim generated several filial monasteries and left a collection of notable manuscripts, now kept at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel.

During the Thirty Years' War the Hildesheim Prince-bishop Ferdinand of Bavaria, backed by the Catholic League and his Wittelsbach relatives, took the occasion to regain the lost territories.

Nevertheless, in 1632 the Catholic canons again had to abscond from the approaching Swedish army and Wöltingerode, though it finally fell back to the Hildesheim Bishopric in 1643, remained Lutheran until the 1803 secularisation.