Frisia Coast Trail.com

Frisia could easily claim the title: land of Atlantis. 19 inhabited islands and 244 villages drowned along the old Frisian coast trail in the past 1,500 years. We bet there are more out there... Atlantis emerged in the writings of Greek philosopher Plato. That was around 350 BC. In two of his dialogues, the "Temaeus" and the "Critas", he mentions the lost city. Atlantis was not only known for its mysterious civilisation, but even more for its cataclysmic destruction some 7,

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

Tidal marshlands and Frisians, a dual entity. The Chauci and the Frisians—referred to by the Romans as Frisii  or Fresones —had learned to adapt to an unprotected yet strangely hospitable salty world: a vast, treeless expanse of tidal marshlands. No rocks, no forests, scarce fresh water, and regularly flooded by a cold, relentless sea. Quoad arbores est quasi nuda —'as for trees, it is almost bare'—is how the marshes of Frisia were once described (De Graaf 2004). Yet despite

At the intersection of land and sea—where it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins—life is harsh. The corrosive salt of the...

It was a Yankee by the name of Mary Mapes Dodge who wrote ‘Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland’. The book was published in New York in 1865. It is about poor, 15-year-old Hans and his sister, Gretel. Gretel wins the Silver Skates, the prize for winning an ice skating race. After that, everything turns out for the best, and the Brinkers are one big happy family. The book also contains the story of the Hero of Haarlem. It is the world-famous story of

We retrace our steps to the sixteenth century, a time when the potato was still an exotic newcomer. Today, children grow up on pasta,...

Nordfriesland, or North Frisia, forms the western coastal and island zone of the cultural region of Schleswig. Extending from the Danish town of Tønder in the north to the River Eider in the south, it consists of a broad maritime strip together with fifteen offshore islands and Halligen , or Hallig islands. It is here that a distinctive bonfire celebration takes place every year on 21 February. Much speculation surrounds the (pagan) origins of these large communal fires and t

From 2012 onward, about 5,000 foreign fighters from various European countries travelled to the Levant to join the fighting. Six years later, roughly fifteen percent had died in combat. Others remained in the Middle East—imprisoned or drifting toward new conflict zones as terrorist groups lost ground. But some returned home. This wave of returnees is alarming, yet, regrettably, not unprecedented. Nearly a thousand years ago, laws were already being drafted to address the very

It was not the city of Parisius  ('Paris'). Nor that of Londinium  ('London'). Believe it or not, the early-medieval center for expensive cloth and chic clothing in the northwest of Europe was the muddy Wadden Sea coast. Here the highly sought-after pallia Fresonica  ('Frisian cloth') was fabricated and distributed to the wider world. It possessed a quality good enough for red capes of handsome superheroes like Superman and Thor, and for the heklu blá  ('blue capes') which Od

The mudflats of the Wadden Sea seem endless. But what do you do with them? How do you give meaning to mud? Sure, one cubic meter of mudflat holds millions of diatoms, thousands of small crabs, mussels, snails, and worms. For birds, all this frutti di mare is like ordering à la carte. Birds are nice, sure. But the real meaning of mud comes when you get down and dirty and join a silt-sled race. Every year, these races take place on the mudflats along the Wadden Sea coast of Ger

This is the story of the land reclaimed from the former Middelzee—a shallow inland sea that once split the present-day province of Friesland in two, separating the ancient pagus Westrachia  (modern district Westergo) from pagus Austrachia (modern district Oostergo). The name Middelzee  literally means 'middle sea.' Closing this watery rift took centuries. Through a succession of smaller and larger embankments—continuing into the early seventeenth century—new land was steadil

On May 5th, 2018, it was exactly two centuries since Karl Marx was born. When the good man published the first volume of Das Kapital  in 1867, he was, in fact, about 1,300 years too late to turn the tide. The ship had already sailed—quite literally. Ships of selfish and ruthless Frisian merchants in pursuit of personal wealth, to be precise. If only Karl had known... the world might have looked—let’s say—a little different today. One might say that the Frisians had much in c

Did you know that between 328,770 and 502,190 people lost their lives around the North Sea? On the flip side: millions of possible casualties have been prevented succesfully. For now at least... Half a million casualties is a lot. How could we forget about such a huge number? Did nobody notice? Did nobody mention? It seems it is not even a public secret. Did we forget about it all together? Are we in denial? Living along the North Sea coast is not easy. It is dangerous. The

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. Today, however, the remains of the town of Rungholt—located in the district (Landkreis) of

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

The treacherous mudflats of the Wadden Sea. They are UNESCO protected, but you're not. Take good care when walking sea. Read and shiver!

Your mother-in-law probably chased your tail during life. But do not be so sure you are free once she is gone. If you are looking for...