Friesland

Provincial capital: Leeuwarden

Area: 534,000 hectares/1,460,000 acres

(land area 336,000 hectares/840,000

acres)

Population: 599,000

The province of Friesland in the northeastern Netherlands is ringed on the west and north by the Waddeneilanden or West Frisian Islands, which are continued to the east by the (German) East Frisian Islands. On the southwest, west and northwest Friesland extends to the IJsselmeer and the Waddenzee, and on the south and southeast it is bounded by the Wouden, an area of sandy ridges which forms a transition to the ground moraines of the Drenthe plateau. In the east it merges into the marshland of Groningen. The old Greater Frisian kingdom, Frisia Magna, extended at the beginning of the Christian era from the Belgian coast at Bruges to the river Weser, but thereafter was taken over by powerful neighbors. The southwestern part of its territory as far as the Rhine estuary at Katwijk was conquered by the Romans. In the seventh century the Franks occupied Greater Friesland and Christianized it. The Benedictine monk St Boniface, who was probably martyred at Dokkum, was one of the first missionaries. Around 785 Friesland was conquered by Charlemagne. Western Friesland was incorporated in the province of Noord-Holland at an early stage. In the early medieval period the seven independent Frisian territories between Alkmaar and the river Weser formed an alliance against the Norsemen - still commemorated in the Frisian coat of arms and flag (seven diagonal bands in cobalt-blue and white with seven red water lily leaves).

Friesland is the only part of the Netherlands with a second official language. In much of the province Frisian is spoken as well as Dutch. This is an independent West Germanic language, with three variant forms - East Frisian, spoken in the Saterland area in the German province of Lower Saxony; North Frisian, spoken on the Schleswig-Holstein coast and on some of the German North Sea islands; and West Frisian, still spoken by some 400,000 people in Friesland and on the West Frisian islands. West Frisian died out almost completely as a written language from the 16th century onwards, and until the 20th century remained alive only in country areas. Then the Frisian Academy, founded in 1938, revived the movement to secure official recognition for the language which had first emerged during the Romantic period in the 19th century. Thereafter the Frisian language was increasingly taught in schools and at the universities of Groningen and Amsterdam, and a translation of the Bible into Frisian was published. Even street signs are now bilingual; and with its own language the province also has its own literature and culture.

Agriculture is the predominant element in the economy of Friesland. With the exception of a narrow strip of very fertile arable land parallel to the coast of the Waddenzee in which sugar-beet, corn, flax and seed potatoes are grown, the whole of the province is occupied by pastures, since the heavy clay soil does not lend itself to intensive cultivation. The farms, usually of between 20 and 50 hectares (50 and 125 acres), specialize in the rearing of Frisian cattle and the production of butter.

Milk produced on the farms is made into butter and cheese in numerous local dairies. There are also a number of food processing plants, as well as some small shipyards building the boats, mostly under 50 tons, which ply on Friesland's dense network of canals.