About
Friesland and Its Proud People
“Friesland”
(“Fryslan” in the Friesian language) is one of the twelve
provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, situated in the northwest
of Europe. It covers an area of seven percent of the Netherlands (750,000
acres) and it has only five percent of the Dutch population.
The
main source of income for its 550,000 inhabitants is agriculture. Over
nine-tenths of the soil is permanent grassland on which the well-known
black and white Friesian cattle are kept. Cheese, condensed milk and
butter are exported. The much sought-after Friesian seed potatoes, grown
on the arable land, are sold mainly to the countries around the Mediterranean
Sea.
Friesland
is an old country. 500 years B.C. Friesians settled along the borders
of what is known now as the North Sea. Friesian horsemen served in the
Roman Legions, e.g. the Equites Singulares of Emperor Nero (54-68),
and in Great Britain near Hadrian's Wall, built in the year 120.
A
tombstone of a Friesian soldier, who had served in the Roman Army, has
been found in Cirencester (Gloucestershire) in England. Around the beginning
of our era, the area extending from Belgium (the Swin) to the Weser
(in the Western part of Germany) along the coast of the “Friesian
Sea”, as the North Sea was then called, was under Friesian jurisdiction.
Later
this area reached up to and beyond the borders of Denmark. The name
“Friesian Islands”, in German “Friesische Inseln”,
for the islands along the coast, still reminds us of this time. The
Friesians were seafarers, tradesmen, horse breeders and farmers. Before
the Vikings also took to the seas (800-1000), they were the great sea
born traders.
They
sailed the Friesian Sea, the bordering rivers and the adjacent seas.
In the English town of York they had a permanent trading post for centuries.
Dorestad was their own trading town. Cloth was an important merchandise.
The
gradual rising of the sea, caused by the melting of the ice on the poles
together with the sinking of the earth, forced the Friesians to built
mounds (Du.: terpen, wierden), on which they could build their houses
and safeguard themselves against floods which came ever higher. One
thousand of these mounds are known. Most towns and villages along the
coast were built on them.
Around
the year when the territory of the Friesians was restricted to the North
of the Netherlands and neighboring Germany, seawalls kept the land free
from the continually higher floods. Heightening the seawalls, a process
that has been carried out unremittingly through the centuries, is now
again in progress.
The seawalls are now built up nearly four times as high as four hundred
years ago. The height at Harlingen was then (1570) 2.60 m above N.A.P.
and in 1977, after the latest construction activities, 9.70 m above
N.A.P. (N.A.P.: “Nieuw Arnsterdarns Peil” = “New Amsterdam
watermark”, originally the average height of the water in the open
lake called “IJ” at Amsterdam).
The
territory of the “Westerlauwers Frisians”, as they are called
now, is nowadays restricted to the province of Friesland in the northwest
of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Four of the five inhabited Dutch
Friesian Islands form a part of the Province of Friesland.
The
Frisians have a language of their own which is spoken as a matter of
course by four/fifths of the inhabitants. It has more in common with
English and Danish than with Dutch.
Typical
for the silhouette of the flat landscape are the towers with saddle-roofs,
the large head-neck-and-trunk-type farmhouses and the “stelpen”
with living quarters, cattle-shed and stack for hay and corn crops,
all covered by one large roof.
From
West to East the soil consists of clay, peat and sand, respectively,
each of these nearly covering one third of the area. In the North and
West the country is open. The Southwest and the middle harbor the Friesian
Lakes. The sandy soil in the East and South is more heavily wooded.
In
this country lives the somewhat conceited Frisian, attached to tradition,
sensitive, often passionate, who loves to meet others in sports and
games and who has retained his Friesian horse through the centuries.
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