This is your DIY manual for enlarging or creating your own terp. Your artificial settlement mound or house platform. Despite terps are being made for more than 2,600 years, this manual is the first of its kind. We sincerely hope it's not too little too late, now that terp-building is on the rise again, and we've observed this often happens in an amateurish way. In doing so, taking unnecessary safety risks.

Although most terps were built in the period between 650 BC and AD 1050, it's still a current solution. Take for example the terp constructed next to the town of Wieringerwerf, located in the embanked land of Wieringermeerpolder in province Noord Holland. Town and terp were founded in '30s of the last century. The terp was even of service at the end of the Second World War, when dikes of the Wieringermeerpolder were destroyed. Read our post Refuge on a terp 2.0, waiting to be liberated, about this catastrophe. The most recent terps were built ten years ago, in region Overdiepse Polder in province Noord Brabant. It's part of the Delta Plan after serious flooding caused by the big rivers Rhine and Meuse two decades ago. Lastly, at the time of writing folks of the village of Blije in province Friesland have a cunning plan to built a terp too.

However. It deeply troubled the Nordfriesen and the Ostfriesen in Germany, and the Frisians in province Friesland in the Netherlands, that the residents of province Noord Brabant and of province Noord Holland already before, don't obey all necessary rituals and procedures. In time, this might have very serious consequences for the safety and health of people who dwell on these terps. Therefore, the Frisian bastards felt it was urgent to produce a manual to avoid future, similar irresponsible behavior.

Be warned that children should construct terps only under direct supervision of an adult. Adults should read the instructions, and in particular all warnings, carefully. Of course, we're not responsible for any injuries or accidents.

Let’s start. Be prepared, it's literally a lot of bullshit!

A: Location

If you want to know where building a terp is opportune, check the site www.overstroomik.nl (translation: will I be submerged?) provided by the Netherlands' Government. Really, this site and its title are not meant to scare people but to show them where them house submerges in case a dyke breaks and to be prepared. These are the spots where this manual comes in handy. The site is only in Dutch and not understandable for expats living in the Netherlands. Number of expats is between 40,000 and 75,000 persons and mostly living in the low-lying coastal zone of Noord Holland and Zuid Holland.

B: Materials

1. eight (or more) skulls of ancestors

2. ten kilogram cattle meat with bones

3. one heirloom piece

4. three cooking pans (not too small)

5. drill

6. ten kilogram pottery

7. hammer

8. eight hundred cubic meter cow dung (depending on your ambitions)

9. shovel

10. stack of firewood

11. box fire matches

12. sea shells (enough to cover the terp surface)

C: Instructions

Best time to erect a terp is in early summer. You don't want to work with dung in the heavy spring, autumn and winter rains. Also, for the containers to drain (see step 7 below) would take ages. Last but not least, making fires (see steps 8 and 9 below) in these rains is nearly impossible.

1. Place your ancestral skulls at the spot where you want the terp to be erected, or an existing terp enlarged. WARNING!: Do not hurry off to kill some of your (close) family members. No! You need to collect remains of your already deceased family members. The terp is to protect you and your family, and the remains will call upon your ancestors for extra protection. Instead, there are many Grave Registration Services on the internet that can help you to locate graves of your ancestors. Some traditions recommend to add a dog skull. This manual considers it optional, as this practice of dog skulls is more related to the maintenance of a house and not that of a terp.

2. Place the meat with bones near the human skulls. Make a little pile of it. The traditional way was that several cows were slaughtered for the occasion. You can go to a local butcher but spare ribs from the supermarket will suffice too. Argentinian matured T-bone steaks are unnecessary expensive, and don't give a better result. Of course, we stimulate to use biological products. An option of last resort is to use jelly sweets, since they consist partly of cattle bone. As a rule of thumb: ten kilogram jelly sweet for every kilogram of meat.

3. Place the heirloom piece near the skulls too. Taking a piece from your in-laws is acceptable as long as it has serious sentimental value for your in-law family. Up to you whether or not you ask permission from your loved in-laws.

4. Now the hard work starts. It feels like Herakles cleaning the Augean stable. Dump the cow dung with the shovel gently over the skulls and over all the other items. There's no alternative but to use predominantly cow dung, since it has a great insulating effect. No human dung, please. Sorry, keep using toilets. WARNING!: Neither horse dung, since it's highly infectious. Blending with sheep dung is not such a problem. Where it comes down to, is that you need loads and loads of dung. In this respect not much has changed over the last 2,600 years: cow dung has always been plentiful at the salt marshes. In the old days used for fuel and, of course, for building terps. Later, after the big dikes emerged 1,000 years ago, and the sea was banned, dung was suddenly needed as fertilizer. And, its insulating effects are now a threat for the climate.

5. Dig ditches around the terp. About a meter wide, but not much broader. For a man of average weight and strength, it must be possible to fierljep ('to far-leap') over the ditch with a four-meter-long leaping pole. The ditches have multiple purposes. Firstly, they are for draining purposes. Secondly, they mark your territory. Thirdly, they have a spiritual meaning, namely fencing of the inner world form the outer (scary) world. Check the Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum, the eighth-century list of heathen practices of the Frisians and the Saxons.

6. Wait until dusk.

7. At dusk, take the cooking pans and drill a small hole in the bottom. Similar as the Mayas later did too with the pottery they buried with the dead. The traditional way of the Frisians was to grab used cooking pots of clay. Essence is that you need containers. Then and now. So, modern pans are perfectly okay to use. Mark the pans from the outside with some of your own blood. No specific patterns prescribed. Fill the pans with a sticky substance that slowly drips through the hole into the dung. Place these containers on the spot above the skulls, meat and heirloom piece.

8. Make a few small piles of wood and light the piles. Again, above the spot where the skulls are buried. WARNING!: Make sure the cow dung isn't too dry, to prevent the whole terp from catching fire. Dried dung is flammable. And we're not in Nordfriesland in February during the yearly biikin celebrations.

9. Wait until the liquid in the cooking pans has fully been drained into the dung. You'll have enough time to have dinner in the meantime. Important to keep the fires burning.

10. Collect the pottery once the liquid is drained. It can be all sorts of pottery. If you're tired of the Delft Blue wall tiles; use those. But roof tiles, your neighbor's china etc., is fine too. Smash the pottery with a hammer and bury it together with the empty perforated cooking pans in a pit somewhere in the newly created terp. Smash or deform the pans too. Frisians were fanatics in breaking pottery and collected meaningful pieces for decades. If you think this is weird, think of a Greek wedding.

11. Dump some of the pottery pieces in the ditches surrounding your terp too. If you have some spare bones of your ancestors left, put it there together with the pottery pieces. It stresses the mark of your territory like a dog pisses against a tree. And the water in the ditches protects your house or inner-world against the spiritual, angry outer-world as well.

12. Lastly, cover the surface of the new terp with a thick layer of sea shells to have a solid and less smelling floor.

Have a safe and pleasant stay on your terp!

The ritual practices of this Manual have been confirmed by archaeologists; Nieuwhof, A., Eight human skulls in a dung heap and more. Ritual practice in the terp region of northern Netherlands 600 BC-AD 300 (2015).

ANNEX

Between Leffinge-Oude Werf (BE) and Misthusum (DK):

Understanding Terps

terps at the Hallig-islands, Nordfriesland

definition & varieties

First of all, we must make clear that the terps we dealt with in this manual, are terps built on the clay soils of the (former) salt marshes.

A terp, in essence, is a man-made, raised mound to dwell on, and to protect buildings and food stocks from inundation. Whether that's on the tidal marshlands bordering the sea, on the peatlands adjacent to those marshlands, or along rivers and at river mouths. Exactly the habitats of wider historic Frisia. Terps can be a mound to support a single house, a platform, or a mound to support a small settlement of a few hundred people.

Therefore, besides terps built on salt marshes or 'saltwater terps', this definition also includes the hundreds of terps found in the peatlands of modern province Noord Holland, especially in the region Waterland, and also the town-terps of settlements like Monnickendam and Amsterdam. These so-called 'sweet-water terps', in connection with rivers and peatlands, existed in the thousands in the Netherlands (Besteman, et al 1992).

‘Sweet-water terps’ of the (former) peatlands were mainly house platforms. Furthermore, the terps in peatlands all have become invisible for the eye. Reason for it, is that peat behaves like water. It flows too, only in slow motion. Over centuries it levels with its surroundings. Terps made of clay and dung on the tidal marshlands, however, remained visible longer.

Besides sweet-water terps in peatlands, there're many hundreds of sweet-water terps in the central river area of the Netherlands. This is the region Batavia, or in Dutch language, region Betuwe. This area only became embanked with dikes from around the year 1000. Toponyms pol, heuvel, hof, werf, and woerd might refer to these (former) artificial mounds, either to dwell on or for refuge during river floodings. The latter toponym woerd might also refer to an elevated acre. Of all the terps, about 580 are dwelling mounds of which the majority on riverbanks, and elevated with clay and sods (Eijgenraam, et al 2022).

To complicate things further, the distinction between saltwater and sweetwater was in practice fluid, especially in much of the peat areas. Either you are a delta or you are not.

Terps on Kampereiland 'Kampen island' in the delta of the river IJssel, belong to this fluid category as well, until the Zuiderzee 'Southern sea' was sealed off in the '30s of the twentieth century and slowly turned into sweet-water lake IJsselmeer. Kampereiland's rich soil is a mixture of sea and river clay. In the year 1364, the city of Kampen received the rights over fourteen islands in the delta which later compose Kampereiland. Earliest mention of the terps on Kampereiland dates from the fifteenth century, the moment when the islands are being inhabited (Nijlunsing 2016, Molema 2018). A terp on Kampereiland is locally known as a huisbelt 'house heap/dump' or a pol 'clump', and about 2 à 3 meters above mean sea level (Meters above Ordnance Datum, MOD). The oldest terps can be found on the river banks (Eilander & Heijink 1990). There're about a hundred farmyards on Kampereiland, most of which are built on a huisbelt (Molema 2018). Find them, for example, along Frieseweg ‘Frisian road’. But also visit the local history museum 'Ons Erf' where a farmstead in original state, including its barns and haystack, can be visited.

‘Saltwater terps’ can be found in relatively large numbers especially along the Wadden Sea coastal zone of Denmark, Flanders, Germany and the Netherlands. The oldest terps can be found in region Westergo in province Friesland. From here, terps spread eastward into Germany. The northernmost terp is that of Misthusum in the southwest of Jutland. It regrettably has been abandoned in the year 1814. The southernmost terp on the North Sea coast is at Leffinge in region Flanders (see further below).

Because people lived on terps on tidal marshlands before high dikes existed, the North Sea could flow out over a vast area of marshland during storm floods. Terps were on average not much higher than +4 MOD. Higher was simply not necessary and thus not worth the effort. The sea just flowed out during storms without, in general, causing too much damage because of this enormous storage capacity.

Highest terp of all is the one at the hamlet of Hogebeintum, namely almost +9 MOD. Why the people of Hogebeintum built such a high terp in the Middle Ages when +4 meters was already enough, we don't know. Was it perhaps to show off? “Look us having a big terp!” Or, was it for religious reasons? Or, were they simply very anxious and traumatized people? Or, did they have too much spare time to kill? Other famous terps are those of Feddersen in Landkreis Cuxhaven and of Ezinge in province Groningen. The latter is also nicknamed ‘Pompeii of the North’ because of the magnificent archaeological excavations (Nieuwhof 2020).

Other ‘saltwater terps’ can be found elsewhere too, i.e. not along the Wadden Sea coast. For example more to the south in province Noord Holland, like the terps of Avendorp, Eenigenburg and Hemkewerf near the town of Schagen in region Westfriesland. Further south, in province Zuid Holland on island Hoeksche Waard near the village of Strijen. And even further south, in Flanders in Belgium, you can find terps at the villages of Leffinge, Bredene, and Oude Werf near Leffinge. Terp Oude Werf being the southernmost terp of the North Sea coast as well. Other terps in region the Zwin in Flanders are being suspected at Knokke, Koudekerke, Oostkerke, Ramskapelle and Westkapelle. Also, toponyms Lockwierde, Houtwerf, Outvaarts Werf, Bogaerts Werf, Zuidwerf, Stekels Werf, Boenzacs Werf, Blevins Werf, Barezeles Werf, Molenwerf, Monnikewerve, Wallewerve, Weerdenwal, and many many more, all might refer to (former) presence of terps. Much archaeological research still has to be done in Flanders, including region the Zwin. Check also our post The Frontier known as Watery Mess: the coast of Flanders to find more information about the early-medieval Flemish-Frisian terp habitation in Flanders.

Also, on (former) Islands of Marken and Schokland in the (former) Zuiderzee ‘southern sea’ you can find terps. Island Marken still is, more or less, an island-Hallig, whilst Schokland is now part of the embanked land called Noordoostpolder. Even underneath the marine town of Den Helder in the upper north of province Noord Holland, lies an old ‘saltwater terp’ waiting for its revanche. It's named Het Torp. Actually, it's the terp of former settlement of Edesthorpa. Located near natural park and museum De Nollen, where once a small island was, and near current neighbourhood De Schooten.

Recently (2019), federation Broekpolder reconstructed the so-called Rottahuis 'Rotta house' with a platform of the year 1015 at the town of Vlaardingen, province Zuid Holland, then still called West Frisia. It illustrates how people lived in the river delta of the river Meuse. Go visit it, now part of the interesting experimental archaeological site Masamuda.

living entity & memory

Some more words concerning the distinction between a terp supporting several houses and/or farms (village), and a terp supporting solely one farm or one house. The latter may not even be called a terp according to tradition. As a Frisian farmer living on a house platform near the village Sexbierum (pronounced as ‘sex-beer-rum’) in province Friesland explained once, not without emotion:

“It is a platform, not a terp!”

Never ever contradict a Frisian farmer.

But more subtle, you could hear a kind of sacred-like respect for terps in his voice. It was simply an insult to compare a terp with a house platform. As if a terp is a living thing. Bit the same saying to a Nordfries that a Hallig (see below) is an island. He will correct you in a grumpy voice, and say it's not an island. Then he will say "moin" to you, and will walk -or swim- away, depending on the tide. He's right in the way that Halligs used to be part of a vast salt marsh area, which largely was lost to the sea in the course of the High Middle Ages. Too fresh in the memory in the psyche of the Nordfriesen to be forgotten, if ever. Admitting it's an island, would be admitting your defeat against your eternal enemy, and benefactor, which took so much fertile land, and especially so many lives.

statistics & money

When talking about numbers, the estimation is that about 500 terps existed in the (former) tidal marshlands of province Friesland (Besteman, et al 1992). House platforms have been left outside this number. Numbers vary too. During a stock-take, including house platforms, in 1905 the number of terps amounted 574 in province Friesland, and in 1944 the number amounted 910. The most recent (2020) numbers are that in province Friesland 955 terps have been identified of which 679 have been partially or completely leveled, and in province Groningen 587 of which 268 have been partially or completely leveled. However, still new terps are being discovered in the landscape. The total, original, number of saltwater terps in the north of the Netherlands, both terps proper and house platforms, is estimated almost 2,500 (Nieuwhof 2020).

Therefore, if we want to be more precise, we should talk about ‘terp remains’ instead of terps since nearly all terps have been commercially exploited, excavated and levelled. The terps you can still see in provinces Friesland and Groningen, are mostly the remains of once much more impressive terps, or those which are fully covered with houses, church and farms and therefore escaped commercial exploitation.

Around the year 1900, terps in the Netherlands, less in region Ostfriesland in Germany, were being excavated massively for commercial purposes. The rich terp soil, the terra preta of the Low Countries, was sold as fertilization for poorer soils, such as the sandy soils in province Drenthe. Terp soil was sold at 70 cent (guilders) per tonne in 1890, which was a lot of money back then. In 1920, terp soil even cost 110 cents per tonne. In the ’40s, commercial quarrying of terp soil stopped. Not because of the Second World War started. No, simply because not many terps were left to be exploited. A positive side effect was that because of these excavations many artifacts have been found. At the same time, much historical (provenance) data has been lost, and small artifacts are scattered all over the country.

Although most 'saltwater terps' have lost their protective function after land had been secured by big-dike building from around the start of the eleventh century, there's one big exception, namely those in Kreis Nordfriesland, Germany. Here, one can still witness Frisians living on terps within the full dynamics of the sea, unprotected by high dikes. These are the so-called Hallig islandsmentioned earlier, which are salt marsh 'islands' with one or a few terps on it. Terps, sometimes supporting only one farm or house, sometimes supporting a small village. For more information about the Hallig islands, read also our post How a town drowned overnight. Currently, after a thousand years, the terps on the Hallig islands of Nordfriesland are being raised once again. To brace themselves for climate change, global warming and rising sea levels.

terp, wierde, Wurt, Warf etc

Finally, notice that we used the word 'terp' as used in province Friesland -and recently in province Noord Brabant too. People in province Noord Holland, however, mostly use the word werf. In province Zeeland and Flanders the word werve is being used, although the toponym wi(e)rde or weerde and stelle also exist. The word werve in province Zeeland mainly because people there prefer to put an e behind every single word they pronounce. In province Groningen, the word wierde is always being used. Official German is Wurt but the Ostfriesen and the Nordfriesen use mainly respectively Warf and Warft. Frisere ‘Frisians’ in the very southwest of Jutland in Denmark use the words værft or varft.

The Old-Frisian word hwarf and the current word werf, and all the variants aforementioned, indicate a mound or a landing. Werf and Warft would, therefore, be more appropriate terms for a dwelling mound than the internationally adopted word terp. The word terp is related to the word torp (Danish), doarp (Mid-Frisian) or dorp (Dutch). However, it's terp that found its way into the English and Flemish language, and therefore we settle the discussion this way. Majority rules.

For a full overview of all the nearly thirty (30!) different names that exist for a terp, check the atlas 'De Bosatlas van de Wadden' published by Noordhoff Atlasproducties (2018). They failed to list one or two in this list. One mentioned above, namely huisbelt in the delta of the river IJssel. But also vliedberg 'flee mountain', as (also) being used in Flanders and province Zeeland. The word vliedberg can donate a mound for cattle the flee to during floods, it can be a remnant of motte-and-bailey castle, or a terp proper.

Note 1 - On behalf of all the Frisians we do apologize for the global heating effects of our dung culture.

Note 2 - There have been two more terps been built in the Netherlands recently, and both in the municipality of The Hague. Both as monuments and not meant for a living platform. These are the Terp of Vink and the terp at the town of Leidschenveen. Read our blog post Terp or Wierde?. But even more exotic, in '30s of the twentieth century the dairy farm Friesche Terp was set up in Pengalengan, near Bandung in the Dutch-Indies, present-day Indonesia.

Note 3 -: In province Friesland, the inhabitants of terp village Blije set up the project 'Terp van de Toekomst' (terp of the future) and want to build a terp at the tidal marshland again, north of the village Blije. It would be the first terp build on the salt marsh after more than a thousand years.

Note 4 - You can be giggly about the practice of digging ditches and marking your territory with pottery and bones of your ancestors, but it's actually the foundation of modern Western society. Ditches, banks, walls, hedges and so on, embodied control over resources through agricultural property rights. They gave among others expression to social relationships, status and communal identity. Yes, identity originally was determined by the land the group possessed and not by genes and origin. Read also: Oosthuizen, S., The Emergence of the English (2019).

Suggested music

Reboelje, Eilân yn de see (1999)

Further reading

Bank, J. & Bosscher, D., Omringd door water. De geschiedenis van de 25 Nederlandse eilanden (2021)

Besteman, J.C., Bos, J.M. & Heidinga, H.A., Graven naar Friese koningen. De opgravingen in Wijnaldum (1992)

Deckers, P., Ervynck, A. & Tys, D., De vroegmiddeleeuwse bewoning van de kustvlakte: de terp site Leffinge-Oude Werf (2012)

Dijkstra, M.F.P, Rondom de mondingen van Rijn en Maas. Landschap en bewoning tussen de 3de en 9de eeuw in Zuid-Holland, in het bijzonder de Oude Rijnstreek (2011);

Doorn, van F., De Friezen. Een geschiedenis (2021)

Eijgenraam, G., Beek, van R. & Candel, J., Hoog en droog naast de rivier. De archeologische rijkdom van woonheuvels in de Betuwe (2022)

Eilander, D.A. & Heijink, W., Bodemkaart van Nederland. Toelichting bij de kaartbladen 20 West Lelystad (gedeeltelijk), 20 Oost Lelystad en 21 West Zwolle (1990)

Ervynck, A., Deckers, P., Lentacker, A., Tys, D. & Neer, van M., ‘Leffinge-Oude Werf’: the first archaeozoological collection from a terp settlement in coastal Flanders (2012)

Everdingen, van J., Droogte maakt contouren van middeleeuws terpdorp bij Strijen zichtbaar: ‘Dit is van groot belang’ (2022)

Frankfurt, H.G., On Bullshit (1986)

Halbertsma, H., Terpen tussen Vlie en Eems. Een geografisch-historische benadering (1963)

Knol, E., Hogebeintum aan snee (2019)

Knol, E., et al, The medieval cemetery of Oosterbeintum (Friesland) (1996)

Maijer, M., IJsseldelta bij Kampen (2021)

Mann, C.C., 1491. New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2006)

Meier, D., Ausgrabung: Hundorf (website)

Meier, D., Die Halligen. In Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (2020)

Molema, M.M.L., Buurmans gras is altijd groener. Een interdisciplinair onderzoek naar de landschapskenmerken, bezitsverhoudingen en gebruiksgeschiedenis van hooilanden in de IJsseldelta tijdens de 19e en 20e eeuw (2018)

Nicolay, N. & Langen, de G. (eds), Graven aan de voet van de Achlumer dorpsterp (2015)

Nieuwhof, A., 650 Terpen langs de Noordzee (2018)

Nieuwhof, A., Eight human skulls in a dung heap and more. Ritual practice in the terp region of northern Netherlands 600 BC-AD 300 (2015)

Nieuwhof, A., De lege vierde eeuw (2016)

Nieuwhof, A., Ezinge Revisited. The Ancient Roots of a Terp Settlement. Volume 1: Excavation – Environment and Economy – Catalogue of Plans and Finds (2020)

Nieuwhof, A., Scherven brengen geluk. Aanwijzingen voor opzettelijk gebroken aardewerk (2018)

Nieuwhof, A., Bakker, M., Knol, E., Langen, de G.J., Nicolay, J.A.W., Postma, D., Schepers, M., Varwijk, T.W., Vos, P.C., Adapting to the sea: Human habitation in the coastal area of the northern Netherlands before medieval dike building (2019)

Nijlunsing, W., Kamper munten in muntvondst Kampen 2010 (2016)

Oosthuizen, S., The emergence of the English (2019)

Popta, van Y. & Aaldersberg, G., Onbekend, maar niet onbemind: terpen en terponderzoek in de Noordoostpolder (2016)

Remkes, J., Wat wel kan: uit de impasse en een aanzet voor perspectief (2022)

Renswoude, van O., De Huigen en het Humsterland (2022)

Renswoude, van O., Leeuwarden en andere warden (2022)

Roessingh, W., Een archeologische opgraving op ‘Het Torp’ (2018)

Versloot, A., De herbewoning van de Friese kwelders en terpnamen. Een onderzoek naar mogelijke verbanden (2021)

Westerink, B., Wierdenlandschap (2022)

Zwaenepoel, A. & Vandamme, D., Herders, schapen en natuurbeheer in de Zwinstreek (2016)