Living in the Land of the Perpetual Present Participle

I once did a paper on Friesland, Netherlands for a multi-cultural class. What follows is the paper, adjusted for a blog. Not long, the paper just skims the surface of some aspects of Dutch culture, particularly Frisian. It’s only the tip of the iceberg and everyday I am learning more.


Living in the Land of the Perpetual Present Participle


In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, there is a line in chapter one, page 13, which reads, “But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” Keep this quote in mind as I relate a story that is often repeated on my mother’s side of the family. The story is that we are somehow related to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. This story is made plausible by the fact that my great-grandmother, Jennie Rozendal, along with her parents, sailed to America around 1880 from Friesland, a province in northern Holland, when Jennie was around five year old.

Above is a picture of Jennie, or Jantje as she was known in Het Bildt, Friesland, Holland. By the time this picture was taken, Jennie was a young married woman, living in Nebraska. She has a determined set to her mouth. I never met Jennie. She died in 1944 in land-locked Omaha, Nebraska, survived by her husband, Charles Krumwied, who had a truck farm . . . certainly an unlikely end for Dutch royalty. Still, the story gave me a life long interest in all things Dutch, the land of seas, windmills and wooden shoes.

Geography
Edmondo De Amicis, the Italian author of Holland, a 19th century travel book, wrote that the Dutch have three enemies: the sea, the lakes and the rivers; they repel the sea, they dry the lakes, and they imprison the rivers, but with the sea it is a combat which never ceased. This constant battle with nature’s enduring powerful force has shaped the Dutch culture as well as literally shaping their country. Although the Netherlands means the “low countries,” the Netherlands could also refer to the constant fear of encroachment by the seas. (Van Klompenburg 18) The word, “nether,” is of old English origin for a Germanic source. It is related to the Dutch “neder” which means ‘down’ or ‘under,’ so Netherlands means underlands, and since more than half of the Netherlands is below sea level, it could also mean under water. (Chantrell 341)

To be Dutch, as the landscape reminds its citizens, is to exist in a “perpetual present participle.” (Schama 609) In 1281 a great flood swamped much of the Netherlands, killing 15,000 people. (Van Klompenburg 29) According to Paul Claudel, the French poet, playwright and diplomat, the Netherlands has a kinetic quality, where the sea and land seem to be one and the same, “as if the grass anticipates the water.” (Schama 11)

Much of the Netherlands’ coastline is artificial. The first dikes were built by the Roman general Drusus during Rome’s occupation of Friesland in 12 BC. He used them to protect his armies. He also had canals dug so that Roman ships could pass from river to river without having to cross the treacherous North Sea. Modern day dikes are made of earth, wood, granite and metal. Electric pumping systems, locks, and extensive hydraulic engineering projects are constantly working to keep the seas at bay. (Van Klompenburg 21)

I recently learned that Het Bildt, the area of Friesland, from where my maternal grandmother’s family came, literally means “silting up of the land.” Het Bildt in Friesland was formed out of a sea called the Middlesee. It was done under the direction of the two sons of the Saxon duke Albert of Saxony-Meissen. They signed an agreement with the three noble Wijngaarden brothers, Dirk, Floris and Jacob Oem, and the brothers’ brother-in-law, Thomas Beukelaar to dike a 14 kilometer long dike which produced Het Bildt. No machinery was available in the 1500s. The work was done entirely by hand, spade, boats and lots and lots of mud.

In the province of Friesland, there was a saying, “Dike or leave.” This meant that the farmer was expected to maintain his section of dike or he would be asked to leave. If he decided to leave, he threw his spade into his section of the dike. Whoever pulled the spade from the ground and cared for the dike became the new owner of the land. (Van Klompenburg 22)

Because windmills play such a large part in the Dutch landscape, they are often featured in the folk art, Delftware, and fine art painting of the Dutch. Even though only 1,000 windmills still survive from the original 9,000 windmills that used to be in Holland, only about 20 are still working and those are mainly for historical preservation. Windmills were originally constructed in the1200s. Sailcloth stretched tautly over wooden braces was used as the wings. Not wanting to share this technology with other countries, a law was passed in 1750 in the Netherlands forbidding the export of windmills. Passports were even refused to Dutch millwrights. (Van Klompenburg 24)

References to windmills have even become part of the Dutch language with Dutch proverbs such as “he cannot keep his mill going,” meaning that his business is not doing well. To seize an opportunity is “to pump while the wind blows.” (Van Klompenburg 25) A windmill sign language developed also. If the wings of the mill formed an “X,” this meant that the mill would not open for some time; if the wings were straight up and down, the mill was opened for business. Sometimes the owners would also hang streamers and flags from the wings of the mill during weddings and at Whitsuntide, the seventh Sunday after Easter. (Van Klompenburg 24)

There is one Dutch culture with many rooms. Because my great-grandmother was from Friesland, this blog focuses on that area of the Netherlands. Obe Postma, a poet of Friesland, who lived from 1868 to 1963, wrote a line in his beautiful poem “Autumn” that spoke to me about the history of family and the value of genealogy research:

“Oh to know the people in me, whom I feel and bear!”
I believe that is something for which genealogists strive – to know the people in us.

Friesland became a province of the Netherlands in 1814 when the Netherlands became a monarchy. It is a wealthy province famous for its dairy cattle and the cheese and milk they produce. Pots, dating from 200 B.C. to 900 A.D., have been discovered in the ancient Friesland mounds. (Holland Ring) These mounds, or terps, were used as dwellings for the first people, Germanic tribes, who lived in what is now the Netherlands. (Van Klompenburg 21) The pots were thought to have been used for cheese making. (Holland Ring)

Dress
In 1805, an Amsterdam publisher, Maaskamp, asked reporters to travel through the Netherlands and record the different dress of the Dutch people. After reading their descriptions, he said, “The Netherlands are a small piece of ground which have a greater diversity of clothing than almost all the continents outside Europe . . . Amsterdam alone has almost as many different costumes as districts: every town in Holland has its own.” (Van Klompenburg 26) Costumes reflected the wearer’s sex, marital status and age. The costumes that the Frisian women wore, particularly around the time when Jennie was born, in 1875, are of interest to me.

In De Amicis’ travel book, Holland, he mentions the women of Leeuwarden, Friesland and their costumes:

“The windows of the first houses were opened, and a few women appeared at them, with heads glittering as if with helmets; and they did in fact wear two road plates of silver, concealing the hair and part of the forehead, and looking like the casque of an ancient warrior.” (De Amicis, 362)

De Amicis wrote that everywhere he looked there seemed to be shimmering spots of gold and silver floating through the streets of Leeuwarden, Friesland. These helmets or orrizers were given to the young women by their husbands-to-be. Wealthy lovers gave their brides-to-be casques of gold. Those of lesser means gave silver casques, and the ones who had little money gave casques of gilded copper. (De Amicis, 363) Also, in Friesland, if a farmer’s wife wore a golden casque, people knew that her barn held forty or more cows; if the casque was silver, the barn held at least twenty-five cows. (Van Klompenburg 27)

On her website, www.skotsploech.nl, Jan Swart shows how to wear a metal casque. A woman prepares her head as follows: she places a knitted cap over her head, and then a black satin cap is placed over that. The metal casque is then capped with a lace topcap with decorative cappins.

Wooden shoes, or klompen, were worn by farmers and fishermen. In the soggy climate of the Netherlands, wooden shoes lasted longer than leather shoes. (In a telephone conversation with Millie at Holland Mall in Pella, Iowa, she said, laughingly, that during the tulip festival in Pella (Iowa), everyone wears the wooden shoes to help create the atmosphere of Holland, but after it is all over, they complain bitterly about their aching feet. She said several thick pairs of socks must be worn to assure comfort, which is minimal at best.) In the Netherlands, the wearing of wooden shoes declined until the 1970s when citizens realized they were practical to wear for gardening or washing their cards. In the 1800s, farmers in Friesland and in other parts of the Netherlands would stuff their wooden shoes with hay for cushioned comfort. (Van Klompenburg 28)

“Place two Dutchmen in a room and they will found a debating society; gather three Dutchmen together in a room and they will found either a church or a political party.” (Van Klompenburg 14) The Netherlands is known worldwide for its liberal attitudes toward soft drugs such as marijuana; prostitution; abortion, usually only as a last resort; and euthanasia. As a people, they have a pragmatic “live and let live” approach to life. Many people are crowded together in a small nation and the Dutch have had to learn to accommodate and celebrate each other’s differences.

Early Religion
The ancient Frisians, led by Redbad, from 679 to 719 AD, were devoted heathens. Many attempts were made to Christianize the Frisians until success came with Charlemagne. Before Christianity, the religious beliefs of the ancient Frisians were a form of Odinism. Even though the people were pagans, they did have a system of obligations based on their given word. Marriage was an oath that bound two people together so a workable society could be formed. To break an oath almost certainly meant death. From the Latin translation of the Lex Frisionum, the law of the Frisians, came, “De hominibus qui sine compositione occidi possunt: . . . infans ab utero sublatus et enecatus a matre,” which such law protected new mothers who killed their newborn children from the normal fines for murder. Infanticide by drowning or exposure was acceptable in ancient Friesland if the infant had not yet had its first feeding. (Boswell 211-12)


Art
The Netherlands is known as the home of major artists such as the great master Rembrandt, the impressionist Van Gogh, and the modernist Mondrian. From Leeuwarden, Friesland came M. C. Escher, (1898-1972), the graphics artist, whose optical illusionist drawings have captivated people for much of the 20th century and into the present 21st century.

“In my prints, I try to show that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to. My subjects are also often playful. I cannot help mocking all our unwavering certainties. It is, for example, great fun deliberately to confuse two and three dimensions, the plane and space, or to poke fun at gravity.” (Escher 7) One wonders if Escher’s growing up in Friesland, in that “perpetual present participle” of a land where the grass anticipates the seas and the sky is mirrored in the water influenced his upside down, inside out perception of the world and his depiction of it in prints where fish swirl into birds, birds fly into fish, and unending stairways go nowhere.


Conclusion
Before we are even a twinkle in our fathers’ eyes, as the old saying goes, we are being shaped by our culture. Wherever we open our eyes for the first time, this is our first shaping of how we will look at the world and how we will fit into it. It is a wonderful scary place, this world of ours, a crazy quilt of different languages and beliefs, but how dull ad monotonous it would be if we were all the same, for while we are all human beings under the same blue sky, we are all looking at each other and this world through different eyes.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boswell, John. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

Chantrell, Glynnis. The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2002.

De Amicis, Edmondo. Holland. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889.

Escher, M.C. (Maurits Cornelis). M. C. Escher: 29 Master Prints. Text: Amsterdam, Meulenhoff & Co., 1971. Illustrations: Amsterdam, M.C. Escher Heirs, 1981. New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 1983.

Hester, Carla. http://www.hollandring.com

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York: Signet, a division f Penguin Putnam, 1995.

Millie, Holland Mall, Pella, Iowa. Telephone interview. 12 Nov. 2004.

Postma, Obe. Autumn. Translated by Anthony Paul. http://www.flmd.nl/auteurs/postma-uk2.htm#boppe

Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

Swart, Jan. “How Do You Put on a Casque.”
http://www.skotsploech.nl/skotsploech/uk/bsuk_kostuum1.html.

Van Klompenburg, Carl. Dutch Touches. Iowa City, Iowa: Penfield Press, 1996.