Overijssel Attractions

Provincial capital: Zwolle

(land area 333,890 hectares/824,708

The province of Overijssel extends across the Netherlands from the IJsselmeer in the northwest to the German frontier in the southeast, bounded on the north by Drenthe and on the south by Gelderland. It offers an attractive variety of landscape - river plains, moorland, ridges of hills, arable land and expanses of sandy soil. In western Overijssel, on the IJsselmeer, are a number of nature reserves and natural watercourses. In the central region of Salland are three, and in Twente to the east two, morainic ridges formed in the second ice age, rising to heights of up to 90m/300ft. Overijssel means "over the IJssel" (i.e. beyond the IJssel when seen from the west). In the Middle Ages, when Overijssel belonged to the Bishop of Utrecht, it was known as Oversticht.

Overijssel was occupied by man from the earliest times. Around 780 it was conquered by the Franks and incorporated in the Carolingian empire. About the year 1000 it was inherited by the Bishop of Utrecht (Nedersticht), who thus also acquired Obersticht. Owing to the independence of the towns and landowners of Oversticht, however, he was unable to establish his authority in the region until Burgundian times. In 1522 Overijssel, as it was now called, passed to the Duke of Gelre, and in 1528 to the Emperor Charles V. During the 80 years' fight for independence, in 1579, Overijssel joined the Union of Utrecht and drove out the Spanish occupying forces; the Spaniards recovered the territory in the following year, but were finally expelled from the province by Prince Maurice of Nassau between 1591 and 1597. After the country was liberated from French rule in 1813 Overijssel became a province of the new Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Most of the population is employed in industry and the services sector, only 10 per cent in agriculture. Some 75 per cent of the area of the province is agricultural land, three-quarters of it pastureland, mostly in small holdings. Stock farming (cattle and pigs) is predominant. In the north and east of the province vegetables are grown. As a result of the redistribution of agricultural land and increasingly intensive cultivation productivity has steadily increased, while at the same time the number employed in agriculture has fallen since 1947 by almost half.

When Belgium became independent the Netherlands lost the textile industry which had hitherto been a major element in the economy. Steps were taken from 1840 onwards to re-establish it in the Twente area, but now on an industrial basis rather than the previous cottage industry. More recently textiles have been displaced by other branches of industry such as metalworking, leading to unemployment problems in such towns as Almelo, Hengelo and Enschede. Other industries have also been established - the extraction of salt (at Boekelo), chemicals, electrical engineering, woodworking, foodstuffs, the extraction of natural gas (Twente) and shipbuilding. The main industrial centers in the province, in addition to the towns in the east of the province already mentioned, are Deventer, Zwolle and Kampen.

The spacious landscapes of Overijssel offer many attractive holiday areas - in the northwest of the province, along the Vecht, in Salland and northwestern Twente.