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Like everywhere along the Wadden Sea shores in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the small republics of the tidal marshlands fought battle after battle against foreign aggressors seeking to subdue them. Counts, bishops, and cities alike tried to lay their hands on these fertile and strategically located lands. And if the threat was not from outside, it came from local headmen striving to establish dominion over a republic. The region of Butjadingen and Stadland, at the

Katniss Everdeen, portrayed by American actress Jennifer Lawrence, is both a survivor and victor of The Hunger Games . She comes from District 12, the impoverished mining region of the country called Panem. In fact, Katniss was never meant to be a tribute in the games. Her younger sister was originally chosen, but Katniss volunteered to take her place. Each year, twenty-four residents—known as tributes—were selected by lottery from the twelve districts of Panem to fight to th

To understand the ‘greatness’ of Great Pier, we decided to look into his ‘achievements’. As a freedom fighter (or pirate, if you like) his core business was to ransack ships and towns. If you listen or read about the places Great Pier sacked the area and number are quite impressive. Considering Great Pier was only active for some four years, his ‘productivity’ is huge or deceiving. To name a few examples of anecdotal places Great Pier ‘paid a visit’. Recently, a friend inform

Breaking! Great Pier measured around 2.30 meters in height! This question has been bugging the Frisians for centuries. Now we know. How? Keep reading… Granted. We asked ourselves this very same question in a previous blog post . We explored how great Pier was… as a leader. This time we are asking the same question, but taking it quite literally: how tall was Great Pier? No, we did not find and measure Great Piers remainings. We know where he is buried, but we don’t know exact

Most Frisians know the name of Great Pier, or ‘ Grutte Pier ’ in Frisian. But what do we really know about him? Well, all we know for sure is that he was tall. Very tall (read how tall exactly ). Spoiler alert: his name gave away that he was tall, right? If you would ask your friends and family what they know about Grutte Pier, then most of them would be able to tell you a handful of characteristics. Some might be even able to add a small story to that name. What most of them

Where the English Channel meets the Celtic Sea, the ships of the Frisian brothers Corsold and Coarchion are said to have sailed, raided,...

Let’s go to the omega. To the end of the Frisia Coast Trail . To Ribe in southern Jutland, Denmark. The oldest town in Scandinavia. A town located on the banks of the Ribe Å. A modest river that flows out into the Wadden Sea stoically slow, opposite the islands of Fanø and Mandø. Ribe started as a seasonal marketplace. Year-round settlement began around the year 700. Everything in peaceful times yet. Only with the raid on the island of Lindisfarne in Northumberland in 793 did

This blog post is not about Aindreas Ó Céirín (1840-1915), better known as Brother Walfrid from Ireland and who founded the Scottish...

Who does not know the epic movie Ben-Hur , released on the big screen in 1959? A movie in which Hollywood actor and civil rights activist...

'In the navy', a song by the Village People. Of the small villages along the southern coast of the North Sea. A water people once united in the mythical Seven Sealands . Moreover, a people who laid the foundations of two of history’s most impressive navies: that of the Kingdom of England and that of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. It should not come as a surprise we are talking about Frisians. In spite of the Latin saying Frisia non cantat  ‘Frisia does not sing

At the end of the eighth century, by decree of Charlemagne and under the supervision of the wise men Wlemar and Saxmund, the customary law of the Frisians was codified. It is called the Lex Frisionum . Its jurisdiction included the land between the Flehum and Sincfalam rivers 'between Vlie and Sincfalam River'. The River Flehum flowed into the North Sea, where the sea strait Vlie is located today, between the islands of Terschelling and Vlieland. Sincfalam , also written as

In 1934, while dredging the River Scheldt near the village of Appels in the region of Flanders, workers unearthed an extraordinary ship’s figurehead (see featured image above). Dated to around AD 400, scholars generally agree it is Germanic in origin and hails from the southern North Sea coast. Yet, to this day, no people or nation has laid rightful claim to this remarkable carving. The Vikings may come to mind, but they only began their raids four centuries later—so, these n

The peoples of islands and archipelagos do not let others dictate how to live their lives. One of those archipelagos that meets these criteria as well is the Wadden Sea. For centuries, it is from here that sea explorers, tax evaders, sturdy Arctic whalers, self-righteous women, pirates, privateers, and other vagabonds have come. An archipelago that the Sea Beggars and the earliest trouser-wearing women call home. Even the first atheist of modern times comes from this archipel

Although the conversion of the Woden-devoted Frisians  was a slow and cumbersome process that only succeeded in depth in the tenth century, Frisia subsequently turned into the richest ecclesiastical area of Europe. Nowhere else on the Isles and the Continent were there this many monasteries and churches packed together. Even though nearly all monasteries have been dismantled with the advent of Protestantism, to this very day, nowhere in the world can one find as many high-med

Hjoggum vér með hjörvi —'we swung our swords'—as all the stanzas of the twelfth-century epic poem Lay of Kraka  begin, the tale of Ragnar Lothbrok’s death. When reading about the famous deeds of great Viking warriors, little attention is given to their moments of failure. Little is written about where and when those glorious men and women died. As it turns out, the coast of Frisia is one great Viking graveyard. It is here, in the (still) smelly blue mud, that legendary heroes

Latið meg ei á Frísaland fordervast!  This is the Faroese language, and its translation is: 'Do not let me perish in Friesland!' It is a cry of a Faroese young woman when she was being kidnapped by Frisian pirates somewhere in the Middle Ages. The question of this blog post is not about how on earth it was possible that the youth on the Faroe Islands had such a bad image of Friesland or Frisia. No. Instead, we will review the old Faroese sagas about Frisians. Faroese oral ac

The arrival of the Romans in north-western Europe at the beginning of the Common Era, with the River Rhine as their northern frontier, marked the starting point for five centuries of widespread piracy. These raids affected not only the coasts of Britannia and northern Gaul but rippled as far as the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The heartland of this piracy was the coastal region stretching from the Lower River Rhine to the River Elbe, including parts of the inland—roughly

"Why am I late to class? Oh, you're gonna love this—there was this random cat in our barn this morning, right? Total stranger. And guess what? I stepped right in its poop . Yep. So before I could even think about school, I had to deal with the whole mess—literally scrubbing my shoes like it was a crime scene. That’s why I’m late, I swear!" A similar pretext was made by a group of Frisian sailors in the year 1040. These sea dogs claimed they had sailed to the North Pole, escap

By the middle of the ninth century, the Vikings had carved out a more or less permanent foothold in Frisia, in the pagus  'territory' of...

The monk Ecgberht of Ripon was the driving force behind the Christianization of the defiant heathens of Frisia. From the influential monastery of Rath Melsigi in Ireland, he launched wave after wave of monks, priests, and other clergy toward the Frisian coast. Among his spiritual soldiers were the monks Willibrord and Adalbert. After receiving their education at Rath Melsigi, both were fired off as well, and landed on the windswept beaches of Frisia. Their spiritual D-Day wa