names – Frisia Coast Trail

Who’s afraid of Voracious Woolf?

Who’s afraid of Jóða Fenris ‘the offspring of Fenrir’? Afraid of hund hrynsævar hræva ‘the hound of the roaring sea corpses’? Who, today, is afraid of the wolf? The dark creature that has lived for so long in the shadowy forests of the east, is on the rise again in Europe. Almost two centuries haveContinue reading “Who’s afraid of Voracious Woolf?”

A severe case of inattentional blindness: the Frisian tribe’s name

The name Frisii for the people living on the southern coast of the North Sea is old. Very old. It dates from the Late Antiquity. Today we call them Frisians. Roman and Greek historians and bureaucrats have written down the tribe’s name of this Germanic or Celtic people in many texts. Almost two millennia ago.Continue reading “A severe case of inattentional blindness: the Frisian tribe’s name”

Weladu the flying blacksmith

Master blacksmith Wayland is well-known from mythology. The blacksmith who was kept captive on a small island in the sea, and escaped from it with self-made wings. The Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, Norwegians, Icelanders, in fact, all the old Germanic peoples had their own medieval stories or artifacts relating to Wayland. Even the Franks did. All, exceptContinue reading “Weladu the flying blacksmith”

Take a virtual hike through Zuid-Holland and Utrecht

This blog is a virtual hike. Grab a coffee and go 200 kilometers per hour. When ploughing through piles of research on where the Frisians roamed, we stumbled upon interesting Frisian place names. A few weeks ago we, the two Frisian bastards, took another hike. We walked a track of 31 km along the riverContinue reading “Take a virtual hike through Zuid-Holland and Utrecht”

How to recognize the Frisians by name?

This is one of the simplest things there is, once you got the hang of it. ‘A child can do the laundry,’ as they say in Dutch. Which has nothing to do with a history of child labor, by the way. Understanding the logic of Frisian names, is essential if you want to achieve aContinue reading “How to recognize the Frisians by name?”