Frisia Coast Trail.com

The fate of tribes and their names in the age of the Great Migration, between the fourth and sixth centuries, was anything but certain....

In our recent blog post Barbarians Riding to the Capital to Claim Rights on Farmland , we recounted the famous story of the two Frisian kings who travelled to Rome 2,000 years ago to seek an audience with Emperor Nero. In this blog post, the roles are reversed. Nearly two centuries ago, a delegate from Rome journeyed to the barbarians in the north to parley with their king in the city of The Hague. “ Je suis Frison, et je suis plus têtu que vous! ” (I am Frisian, and I am mor

Imagine this: one day your husband brings home a young, unmarried woman. A virgin, even. He simply takes her into your house, openly shows her affection—and who knows what else. But that is not all. He also gives this maiden full access to your pantry and your savings account, which she—for crying out loud—starts spending on charity. And when you dare to speak up, your husband brushes you off by comparing you to the jealous queen in Snow White , or Cinderella’s evil stepmothe

In the year 1500, a girl by the name Tjede Peckes was born in the hamlet of Padingbüttel in the region of Land Wursten on the eastern banks of the River Weser. It was a salt marsh area the Wurstfriesen  'Wurst-Frisians' had managed to embank and cultivate. For centuries, they had enjoyed living in a lord-free farmers' republic. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the Wurstfriesen came into conflict with the bishop of Bremen and the duke of Sachsen-Lauenburg, powers tha

In the Middle Age lived a once promiscuous girl named Elisabeth. She had come to repentance, found honourable employ as a maid, and had...

Dockyards, quays, terminals, warehouses, wharves, anchorages, lighthouses, and beacons. Craftsmen, shipping companies, customs offices,...

If you want to track down who killed the whale, the Frisia Coast Trail  region is the place to start. Stop people on the streets along this southern North Sea littoral and ask whether they know anything, and you will likely hear: “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing.” Politicians and officials—say, in The Hague—will lament that they have no recollection of the affair. Better call them all Ishmael. In this blog post, we set out the unvarnished truth: how the peoples

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

The Hunchback II, Jawlensky The 'First Lady' of the village of Grou in the province of Friesland, the Netherlands, also named Grytsje of Grou. Archaeologists found her in January 2018, in the village of Grou at Halbertsmaplein Sq. Her grave is dated mid-eighth century. She received the title First Lady because until this find, it was not known people lived at Grou at all in the Early Middle Ages, already. Grou is situated in the center of the province of Friesland, on former

Late in the afternoon, December 28, 2018. One of the Frisian bastards  arrives in the village of Anjum after a 30-kilometer hike along the coast, starting from Holwerd. It had been exactly 21 years since this quiet village was rocked by national news: the discovery of two male corpses buried in the garden of guesthouse Het Station. The killer? A woman—the guesthouse owner herself. Just to be safe, the bastard had booked a room at a different place: Hotel Wad Oars. But this ho

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

This blog post is not about the Westfrisian writer Hendrik Jan Marsman (1937–2012), better known by his pen name Bernlef . Nor is it...

Below the green and black image of Saskia Holleman, the reincarnation of Mata Hari, her fellow citizen. Saskia was born in 1945 in the town of Leeuwarden in the province of Friesland, standing stark naked in the milky grasslands with a Friesian Holland cow . It is a pamphlet from the former Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP) for the Dutch general elections campaign in 1971. Besides the fact that Saskia was of Frisian descent, the pamphlet also depicts every detail of the scenery