Friesland ( ; ; official ), historically and traditionally known as Frisia (), is a province of the Netherlands located in the north of the country. As of January 2023, the province had a population of about 660,000, and a total area of .
The land is mostly made up of grassland and has numerous lakes. The area of the province was once part of the ancient, larger region of Frisia, which gave the province its name. Friesland today is the home of the Netherlands's ethnic Frisian people. The official languages of Friesland are West Frisian and Dutch, and almost all West Frisian speakers are bilingual with Dutch.
The province is divided into 18 municipalities. The capital and seat of the provincial government is the city of Leeuwarden (West Frisian: Ljouwert, Liwwaddes: Liwwadde), a city with 123,107 inhabitants. Other large municipalities in Friesland are Sneek (pop. 33,512), Heerenveen (pop. 50,257), and Smallingerland (includes town of Drachten, pop. 55,938). Since 2017, Arno Brok is the King's Commissioner in the province. A coalition of the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, the Labour Party, and the Frisian National Party forms the executive branch.
Toponymy In 1996, the Provincial Council of Friesland resolved that the official name of the province should follow the West Frisian spelling rather than the Dutch spelling, resulting in "Friesland" being replaced by "Fryslân". In 2004, the Dutch government confirmed this resolution, putting in place a three-year scheme to oversee the name change and associated cultural programme.
The province of Friesland is occasionally referred to as "Frisia" by, amongst others, Hanno Brand, head of the history and literature department at the Fryske Akademy since 2009. However, the English-language webpage of the Friesland Provincial Council refers to the province as "Fryslân".
History
Prehistory
The Frisii were among the migrating Germanic tribes that, following the breakup of Celtic Europe in the 4th century BC, settled along the North Sea. They came to control the area from roughly present-day Bremen to Bruges, and conquered many of the smaller offshore islands. What little is known of the Frisii is provided by a few Roman accounts, most of them military. Pliny the Elder said their lands were forest-covered with tall trees growing up to the edge of the lakes., Natural History, Bk XVI Ch 2: Wonders connected with trees in the northern regions. They lived by agriculture, The Annals, Bk XIII, Ch 54. Events of AD 54–58. This was confirmed by Tacitus when he said that in an incident where the Frisii had taken over land, they then settled into houses, sowed the fields, and cultivated the soil. and raising cattle., The Annals, Bk IV, Ch 72–74. Events of AD 15–16. Tacitus specifically refers to the herds of the Frisii.
In his Germania, Tacitus described all the Germanic peoples of the region as having elected kings with limited powers and influential military leaders who led by example rather than by authority. The people lived in spread-out settlements., The Germany, Ch V, VII, XVI. He specifically noted the weakness of Germanic political hierarchies in reference to the Frisii, when he mentioned the names of two kings of the 1st century Frisii and added that they were kings "as far as the Germans are under kings"., The Annals, Bk XIII, Ch 54. Events of AD 54–58.
In the 1st century BC, the Frisii halted a Roman advance and thus managed to maintain their independence. Some or all of the Frisii may have joined into the Frankish and Saxon peoples in late Roman times, but they would retain a separate identity in Roman eyes until at least 296, when they were forcibly resettled as laeti (Roman-era serfs) and thereafter disappear from recorded history. Their tentative existence in the 4th century is confirmed by archaeological discovery of a type of earthenware unique to 4th-century Frisia, called terp Tritzum, showing that an unknown number of Frisii were resettled in Flanders and Kent,. Looijenga cites Gerrets' The Anglo-Frisian Relationship Seen from an Archaeological Point of View (1995) for this contention. likely as laeti under the aforementioned Roman coercion. The lands of the Frisii were largely abandoned by as a result of the conflicts of the Migration Period, climate deterioration, and the flooding caused by a rise in the sea level.
Early Middle Ages
The area lay empty for one or two centuries, when changing environmental and political conditions made the region habitable again. At that time, during the Migration Period, "new" Frisians (probably descended from a merging of Frisii, Angles, Saxons and Jutes) repopulated the coastal regions., The case of the Frisians. These Frisians consisted of tribes with loose bonds, centred on war bands under the rule of local chiefs or kings but without great power. The earliest Frisian records name four social classes, the (nobiles in Latin documents; adel in Dutch and German) and (vrijen in Dutch and Freien in German), who together made up the "Free Frisians" who might bring suit at court, and the laten or liten with the slaves, who were absorbed into the laten during the Early Middle Ages, as slavery was not so much formally abolished, as evaporated. The laten were tenants of lands they did not own and might be tied to it in the manner of serfs, but in later times might buy their freedom.
Under the rule of King Aldgisl, the Frisians came in conflict with the Frankish mayor of the palace Ebroin, over the old Roman border fortifications. Aldgisl could keep the Franks at a distance with his army. During the reign of Redbad, the tide turned in favour of the Franks; in 690, the Franks were victorious in the Battle of Dorestad. Radboud, however, made a successful comeback. He entered into an alliance with Pepin and, after Pepin's death, aligned himself with the mayor of the palace Ragenfrid. In 716 he defeated Charles Martel's army in the Battle of Cologne. Three years later he died suddenly.
The location and extent of the Frisian kingdom remain a matter of debate. Twentieth‑century scholarship established that the kings Aldgisl and Radbod had their main power base in western Frisia (in what is now Holland). More recent research, however, suggests that their authority may have extended over all of Frisia, possibly making them overlords of the entire region, including the area of the modern province of Friesland.
In 733, Charles Martel sent an army against the Frisians. The Frisian army was pushed back to Eastergoa. The next year the Battle of the Boarn took place. Charles ferried an army across the Almere with a fleet that enabled him to sail up to De Boarn. The Frisians were defeated in the ensuing battle, and their last king Poppo was killed. The victors began plundering and burning heathen sanctuaries. Charles Martel returned with much loot, and broke the power of the Frisian kings for good. The Franks annexed the Frisian lands between the Vlie and the Lauwers. They conquered the area east of the Lauwers in 785, when Charlemagne defeated Widukind. The Carolingians laid Frisia under the rule of grewan, a title that has been loosely related to count in its early sense of "governor" rather than "feudal overlord". About 100,000 Dutch drowned in a flood in 1228.
Frisian freedom
Around 800, when the Scandinavian Vikings first attacked Frisia, which was still under Carolingian rule, the Frisians were released from military service on foreign territory in order to be able to defend themselves against the heathen Vikings. With their victory in the Battle of Norditi in 884 they were able to drive the Vikings permanently out of East Frisia, although it remained under constant threat. Over the centuries, whilst feudal lords reigned in the rest of Europe, no aristocratic structures emerged in Frisia. This 'Frisian freedom' was represented abroad by redjeven who were elected from among the wealthier farmers or from elected representatives of the autonomous rural municipalities. Originally the redjeven were all judges, so-called Asega, who were appointed by the territorial lords.Heinrich Schmidt: Politische Geschichte Ostfrieslands. 1975, p. 22 ff.
After significant territories were lost to Holland in the Friso-Hollandic Wars, Frisia saw an economic downturn in the mid-14th century. Accompanied by a decline in monasteries and other communal institutions, social discord led to the emergence of untitled nobles called haadlingen ("headmen"), wealthy landowners possessing large tracts of land and fortified homesMedieval Germany: An Encyclopedia, John M. Deep, Pub. 2001, Germany. who took over the role of the judiciary as well as offering protection to their local inhabitants. Internal struggles between regional leaders resulted in bloody conflicts and the alignment of regions along two opposing parties: the Fetkeapers and Skieringers. On 21 March 1498,Markus Meumann, Jörg Rogge (Hg.). Die besetzte "res publica". Zum Verhältnis von ziviler Obrigkeit und militärischer Herrschaft in besetzten Gebieten vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Pg. 137. Papers from a conference held 20–21 Sep 2001, at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. By Markus Meumann, Jörg Rogge. Published 2006 LIT Verlag Berlin -Hamburg-Münster. a small group of Skieringers from Westergo secretly met with Albert III, Duke of Saxony, the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, in Medemblik requesting his help.The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 1993, p. 214. Albrecht, who had gained a reputation as a formidable military commander, accepted and soon conquered all Friesland. Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg appointed Albrecht hereditary potestate and gubernator of Friesland in 1499.The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Golden Age by Maarten Prak, Pub 2005
In 1515, an army of haadlingen and peasants, with the help of mercenaries known as the Arumer Zwarte Hoop, started a fight for freedom from oppression by the Habsburg authorities. One of the leaders was Pier Gerlofs Donia, whose farm had been burned down and whose kinfolk had been killed by a marauding Landsknecht regiment. Since the regiment had been employed by the Habsburg authorities to suppress the civil war of the Fetkeapers and Skieringers, Donia put the blame on the authorities. After this he gathered angry peasants and some petty noblemen from Frisia and Gelderland and formed the Arumer Zwarte Hoop.The rebels received financial support from Charles II, Duke of Guelders, who claimed the Duchy of Guelders in opposition to the House of Habsburg. Charles also employed mercenaries under command of his military commander Maarten van Rossum in their support. However, when the tides turned against the rebels after the Donia's death in 1520, Charles withdrew his support, without which the rebels could no longer afford to pay their mercenary army. The revolt was put to an end in 1523 and Frisia was incorporated into the Habsburg Netherlands, bringing an end to the Frisian freedom.
Modern times
Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, became the first lord of the Lordship of Frisia. He appointed Georg Schenck van Toutenburg, who had crushed the peasants' revolt, as Stadtholder to rule over the province in his stead. When Charles abdicated in 1556, Frisia was inherited by Philip II of Spain along with the rest of the Netherlands. In 1566, Frisia joined the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule.