Frisia Coast Trail.com

In March 714, Redbad's army reached the shores of Cologne . That is deep in the Frankish heartlands and way out of the traditional Frisian coastal territories. Sure, Frisians were smelly bastards, but eau de Cologne wasn't invented yet. Was Redbad ahead of his time or why else did he end up there? A movie about this Frisian king will be released in 2018 as a tribute. In 2019, it will be 1300 years ago that he died. In a previous article we explored the battles of Redbad . We

King Redbad died in 719. Some 1300 years later, as a tribute a  movie  about this Frisian king will hit the silver screen in the Dutch cinemas. Redbad repeatedly ended up fighting his neighbours, the Franks. Where and how often will be explored in this article. As a hikers blog that follows the whereabouts of Frisian history, we are especially interested in specific battle locations in order to add them in our trail itinerary. How often and where Redbad battled is pretty u

This blog post is about the town of Medemblik—the grande dame  of the Westfriesland region in the province of Noord Holland in the Netherlands. A place steeped in legend, said by some to have been the seat of the heathen King Radbod. But more than myths, Medemblik stands at the heart of a harsh and stubborn history: that of the ‘beastly’ Westfrisians. For centuries, the bestiales Fresones —the beastly Frisians—were forced to defend themselves against both the unforgiving elem

In both Germany and the Netherlands, many Frisians have watched with unease as waves of referenda and separatist movements have swept across Europe and beyond in recent years—Quebec, Scotland, Kurdistan, Catalonia, Padania, and Ambazonia, to name only a few. At the same time, entire peoples such as the Yazidis and the Rohingya have been driven from their homelands. Against this backdrop, the city of Leeuwarden in the province of Friesland prepared to serve as the European Cap

In contrast to today’s Sunday rest, for centuries the island of Walcheren was a pagan stronghold and a safe haven for Vikings with their...

Around the year 440 (Shippey 2022), a betrayal unfolded on the southern shores of the North Sea—a tragedy not forgotten in north-western Europe, echoing even in distant Bavaria. And it never will be. We are talking about the bloody battle at the citadel of King Finn—or Fin Folcwalding Fresna cynne , as he is called in the Anglo-Saxon poem Widsið . This poem, dating from the early tenth century, recounts the fate of Finn, son of Folcwald and young king of the Frisian tribe. It

When it comes to the deradicalization of foreign terrorist fighters in modern Western societies, the Frisians—meaning here the present-day regions of Ostfriesland and Land Wursten  in Germany, and the provinces of Friesland and Groningen in the Netherlands—have neither a strong track record nor notable expertise to offer. Their only meaningful contribution to contemporary counterterrorism efforts lies in the lessons of their own past: a vivid example of how radicalization and

In the 8th century the Battle of the Boarn  was fought. It was a huge battle between the Frisians and the Franks. The stakes were very...