On my photoblog I got a comment from a co-blogger who congratulated me with living in such a beautiful countryside. I replied: I love it, indeed. I came here for settlement 15 years ago, and I saw around me the illustrations from "Ot and Sien" a series of childrens' book from my childhood. It seemed as if time had been frozen for 75 years: the houses, the pastures, etc. The only thing is that it is flat everywhere, no hills. Sometimes you find yourself in a kind of green prairy-landscape, other times amidst small fields cut by oak tree-lanes, or on a lake (many Germans come here to sail). I could fill a whole paper about this part of the Netherlands. Let me give you some highlights:
Fryslân or Friesland is the only province in our country with an own language. This language, Frisian, stems from the time the Frisians, the Franks and the Saxons populated our country. The Franks and the Saxons adopted Dutch, the Frisians kept their own language, which is also affiliated to English because together with the Saxons and the Danish they conquered the greater part of the U.K. in the early Middle Ages. Many words sound alike, or almost alike, in Frisian and English, however written differently. Frisian is spoken by some 300,000 people, and is the second official language in the Netherlands. The province is renown around the world because of the Frisian cattle; there is no country in the world without its offspring. Economically, agriculture is the main branch of industry, but since around 1960 tourism has become at least as important. Thanks to tourism, we can maintain a lot of traditional things such as traditional round- or flat-bottom ships (their keel is replaced by leeboards because of the shallow waters), and the costly maintenance of accessibility of water areas (campsheetings, bridges, mooring places etc.). Friesland (or Fryslân) has a number of very beautiful small towns, next to its capital Leeuwarden with also a beautiful centre that unfortunately has been modernized too fast on a number of places, in Leeuwarden’s striving to keep up with the Jones (New York, Paris, Shanghai J). To be mentioned are Dokkum (where Boniface has been killed by the heathen), Bolsward, Franeker Here used to be a university until Napoleon’s time. It also contains the famous Planetarium of Eyse Eysinga, an amateur astrologer who built a completely functioning solar system in his house driven by sophisticated wooden clockworks, it still functions today very accurately, it astonished the scholars of those days (somewhere in the eighteenth century). The ceiling of his living room is reserved for the planets turning around the sun, each in its own pace. Some of them make one circle around the sun in more than a human lifetime, which indicates the accuracy of the clockwork! Then there are Drachten (grown too fast in modern times to have an own character with an old centre – now they are digging out an old canal that first had been filled up to make the road broader, in order to get back something of the old times), Heerenveen (same story, famous for its soccer club) and Harlingen (harbour to the Waddenzee in open connection with the North Sea).
Friesland has been much larger than it is now, stretching from the Belgian coast all the way North to Denmark in the early Middle Ages. Soon the counts of Holland emerged as Frisian opponents on one side, and the Saxons on the other side. The Frisians had their own kings and had to yield to foreign powers eventually. In Germany and South Denmark their language is only a kind of curiosity, spoken by a handful of people, our Dutch province is the only area where it is still common language next to Dutch (in the countryside only spoken to people from outside Friesland).
Of course there is much more to tell about Fryslân, its history, its musea, the people, etc., but it will not suit a blog like this. I can refer to some websites:
http://www.drf.nl/images/1995/Zomer/index.html
http://www.hartvanfriesland.nl/engels.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friesland
http://www.frieslandholland.nl/uk/
Fryslân or Friesland is the only province in our country with an own language. This language, Frisian, stems from the time the Frisians, the Franks and the Saxons populated our country. The Franks and the Saxons adopted Dutch, the Frisians kept their own language, which is also affiliated to English because together with the Saxons and the Danish they conquered the greater part of the U.K. in the early Middle Ages. Many words sound alike, or almost alike, in Frisian and English, however written differently. Frisian is spoken by some 300,000 people, and is the second official language in the Netherlands. The province is renown around the world because of the Frisian cattle; there is no country in the world without its offspring. Economically, agriculture is the main branch of industry, but since around 1960 tourism has become at least as important. Thanks to tourism, we can maintain a lot of traditional things such as traditional round- or flat-bottom ships (their keel is replaced by leeboards because of the shallow waters), and the costly maintenance of accessibility of water areas (campsheetings, bridges, mooring places etc.). Friesland (or Fryslân) has a number of very beautiful small towns, next to its capital Leeuwarden with also a beautiful centre that unfortunately has been modernized too fast on a number of places, in Leeuwarden’s striving to keep up with the Jones (New York, Paris, Shanghai J). To be mentioned are Dokkum (where Boniface has been killed by the heathen), Bolsward, Franeker Here used to be a university until Napoleon’s time. It also contains the famous Planetarium of Eyse Eysinga, an amateur astrologer who built a completely functioning solar system in his house driven by sophisticated wooden clockworks, it still functions today very accurately, it astonished the scholars of those days (somewhere in the eighteenth century). The ceiling of his living room is reserved for the planets turning around the sun, each in its own pace. Some of them make one circle around the sun in more than a human lifetime, which indicates the accuracy of the clockwork! Then there are Drachten (grown too fast in modern times to have an own character with an old centre – now they are digging out an old canal that first had been filled up to make the road broader, in order to get back something of the old times), Heerenveen (same story, famous for its soccer club) and Harlingen (harbour to the Waddenzee in open connection with the North Sea).
Friesland has been much larger than it is now, stretching from the Belgian coast all the way North to Denmark in the early Middle Ages. Soon the counts of Holland emerged as Frisian opponents on one side, and the Saxons on the other side. The Frisians had their own kings and had to yield to foreign powers eventually. In Germany and South Denmark their language is only a kind of curiosity, spoken by a handful of people, our Dutch province is the only area where it is still common language next to Dutch (in the countryside only spoken to people from outside Friesland).
Of course there is much more to tell about Fryslân, its history, its musea, the people, etc., but it will not suit a blog like this. I can refer to some websites:
http://www.drf.nl/images/1995/Zomer/index.html
http://www.hartvanfriesland.nl/engels.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friesland
http://www.frieslandholland.nl/uk/
1 comment:
Thanks for this lesson on Friesland. It sounds like an idlic place.
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