Frisia Coast Trail.com

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

"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 Nordendi, also known as Norditi. But by the year 884, the Frisians had had enough. They forged swords and axes, raised an army, and drove the Norsemen out once and for all—at the cost of exactly 10,377 Viking lives. Out of this crisis came an unexpected innovation. The reclaimed land was managed in a new way: eleven centuries ago, the Frisia

Master blacksmith Wayland is well known from Germanic mythology. According to legend, he was imprisoned on a small island at sea but escaped using wings of his own making. Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, Norwegians, Icelanders, Goths—in fact nearly all early Germanic peoples—preserved stories or artifacts relating to Wayland. Even the Franks did. All except one: the Frisians. And yet, as it turns out, Frisia may possess the oldest claim of all. Several early-medieval gold solidi  beari

According to medieval legend, around the year 800, Charlemagne and Pope Leo clashed with the citizens of Rome. The Pope was attacked and forced to flee the city. It was an army of 'naked' Frisians, led by Magnus, that stormed back in, retaking the citadel and the Urbs Aeterna —the Eternal City. In gratitude, Charlemagne offered the Frisians wealth, weapons, treasure, and more. But Magnus made a different choice: that all Frisians should be free, beholden to no one—except, of

In the year 516, King Hygelac of the Geats, a tribe in, probably, the southeast of Sweden, raided Frisia. Back then, this part of the Netherlands was an impenetrable land with big rivers, little streams, swamps, peat bogs, and damp forests covered with moss and mould. Hygelac's expedition into Frisia was less fortunate, as he was killed and not one of the other Geatish raiders made it home with booty. From the Old English epic poem Beowulf , we know that King Hygelac was wear

In the series Myths of Nations, we disclose to you this time that the Frisians, in fact, didn't come from India, as the old legends tell us. A bummer, we know. And, what's proven yet again in this post, we should listen more often to Led Zeppelin. In particular, to their Immigrant Song. Install yourself, click  this link  to listen to Robert Plant’s whining and crying voice, and, above all, read about the nonsense and truth behind the origin of nation myths. We come from the

Nordfriesland or North Frisia. The western coast and islands of the region of Schleswig. Stretching from the Danish town Tønder in the...

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

Rungholt. A thriving and wealthy town of the archipelago of the Wadden Sea that disappeared in the waves overnight in the year 1362. For six centuries, only legends have told us about what happened to Rungholt. A town submerged in the sea as the wrath of God. According to these medieval legends, you could still hear the chime of its church bells  rising from the dark depths of the sea. But now the remains of the town of Rungholt in Landkreis  'district' Nordfriesland, also ca