Frisia

“ The three districts of Frisia and their local solidi.
Frisia was divided into three divisions, and in certain glosses which appear late in the laws [151] we are told that each division had a separate solidus of its own.
(1) Between the Laubach and Weser (the Northern division) the solidus is described as of two denarii, i.e. tremisses, of the nova moneta. [152] This solidus, we shall find, was like that of the Saxon tribes on the Eastern side of the Weser. The solidus, being of two tremisses, contained sixty-four wheat-grains of gold. ”

“ From such a country as ancient Frisia was, emigration, as the population increased, was a necessity. The story of Hengist and the custom of the expulsion of a number of the young people of his country may have reasonably prevailed in Friesland. Whether they settled in England under the names Angles and Jutes, or under tribal names of their own, it is certain that large numbers of Frisians must have become English colonists under the Saxon name. The old chroniclers are, indeed, at a loss whether to make Hengist a Frisian or a Saxon. ”

“ In Frisia.
Next, as to Frisia, eight per cent. of the names mentioned in the Fulda records end in 'inga,' two and a half per cent. in ingaheim, and three per cent. in ing with some other suffix, making thirteen and a half per cent. in all. In Friesland also there are survivals of the right of the youngest.
In Germany most densely in the old Roman provinces of the 'Agri Decumates.'
Over North Germany, outside the Roman limes, the proportion is much less, shading off in the Fulda records from six to three, two, and one per cent. ”

“ Some of the Frisians had been to Rome, the Eternal City, and had there learned, from the cruel Romans, how to build great enclosures, not of stone but of wood. Here, on holidays, they gave their prisoners of war to the wild beasts, for the amusement of thousands of the people. The Frisians could get no lions or tigers, for these fierce brutes live in hot countries; but they sent hundreds of hunters into the woods for many miles around. These bold fellows drove the deer, bears, wolves, and the aurochs within an ever narrowing circle towards the pits. ”

“ Then Wulfram went back to Fontinella to get more monks, laborers, and lay brothers for his work in Frisia. The converted Frisians were beginning to realize the blessings of regular and well-ordered work. There were more and more laborers and fewer sea robbers and warriors. Nevertheless, the great mass of the Frisian people remained obstinate, following the example of the king and the great chiefs.
Among the gods whose wrath the Frisians most [172] feared was the god of the sea. The lowness of the land made frequent inundations inevitable. ”

“ It is at the bottom of the sea: forfeited, like the lava-stricken plains of Sicily, of Campania, and of Iceland, in the great game of Man against Nature—for it is not everywhere that Man has been the winner. The war of the Frisians against the sea has been the war not of the Titans against Jove, but of the Amphibii against Neptune.
Every Frisian—Friese as he calls himself—is an agriculturist, and it is only in the villages that the Frisian tongue is spoken. In the towns of Ripe, Bredsted, and Husum, small as they are, there is nothing but Danish and German. ”

“ In the year 845 Eurick, king of the Northmen, advanced against Louis in Germany with 600 vessels along the river Elbe.
In the year 850 Rorik, the nephew of Harold, who had recently left the service of Lothair, taking with him an army of Northmen, comes by the Rhine and the Watal with a multitude of ships, devastating Frisia, the island of Batavia, and other neighbourhood places.
In the year 852 the Northmen arrived in Frisia with 252 ships; after having received much silver they go elsewhere. ”

“ FRISIANS (Lat. Frisii; in Med. Lat. Frisones, Frisiones, Fresones; in their own tongue Frêsa, Frêsen) , a people of Teutonic (Low-German) stock, who in the first century of our era were found by the Romans in occupation of the coast lands stretching from the mouth of the Scheldt to that of the Ems. They were nearly related both by speech and blood to the Saxons and Angles, and other Low German tribes, who lived to the east of the Ems and in Holstein and Schleswig. The first historical notices of the Frisians are found in the Annals of Tacitus. ”

“ The “free” Frisians could not endure this Frankish outpost on their borders. Utrecht was attacked and captured, and the church destroyed. The first missionary to meet with any success among the Frisians was the Englishman Wilfrid of York, who, being driven by a storm upon the coast, was hospitably received by the king, Adgild or Adgisl, and was allowed to preach Christianity in the land. Adgild appears to have admitted the overlordship of the Frankish king, Dagobert II. (675) . ”

“ But love of country is among the Frisians a passion. In their eyes there is no land like Friesland, and the fairest portions of the world cannot in Frisian estimation rank alongside their barren sandy islands. ”

“ It is well known that the greater part of the ancient Friesland has been swept away by the encroachments of the North Sea, and the disjecta membra of the Frisian race, pressed by the sea in front and more powerful nationalities behind, are found only in isolated fragments from the Zuider Zee to the coasts of Denmark. Many Frisians accompanied the Angles and Saxons to Britain, and Old English was in many respects more closely connected with Old Frisian than with any other Low German dialect. ”

“ Towards the close of the century they begin to figure much more prominently in Frankish writings. There is no doubt that by this time their territories had been greatly extended in both directions. Probably some Frisians took part with the Angles and Saxons in their sea-roving expeditions, and assisted their neighbours in their invasions and subsequent conquest of England and the Scottish lowlands. ”

“ Bede says that when he returned to Frisia his see was fixed in Ultrajectum (Utrecht) . He spent several years in founding churches and evangelizing, till his success tempted him to pass into other districts. From Denmark he carried away thirty boys to be brought up among the Franks. ”

“ The migration of the Phiresii south-westward has left its traces in certain parts of Jutland, and appears to have been such a very early one that it occurred before the invention of runes by their neighbours the Goths, for no fixed runic monuments have ever been found in any part of Old Frisia. The Daucones were the Dacians or Danes, and they migrated, apparently, after the invention of runes, for fixed monuments with runes are found in Denmark. ”

“ The Frisian religion is extremely simple, and pure Monotheism. Wr-alda or Wr-alda’s spirit is the only eternal, unchangeable, perfect, and almighty being. Wr-alda has created everything. Out of him proceeds everything—first the beginning, then time, and afterwards Irtha, the Earth. Irtha bore three daughters—Lyda, Finda, and Frya—the mothers of the three distinct races, black, yellow, and white—Africa, Asia, and Europe. As such, Frya is the mother of Frya’s people, the Frieslanders. ”

“ Of English dialects the Frisian is nearest to Kentish, except in the northern Frisian islands, where it seems more akin to West-Saxon. I take this from Siebs, Zur Gesch. der engl.-fries. Sprache, in Paul’s Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, 2nd ed. i. 1153 ff., for a reference to which I am indebted to Professor Napier, who tells me that in his judgement Englishmen and Frisians would be quite intelligible to one another in the ninth century. There is a sentence of Frisian in Pertz, xxii. 576, which might just as well be Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ The history of the Frisian Germans must begin with their present distribution. They constitute the present agricultural population of the province of Friesland; so that if Dutch be the language of the towns, it is Frisian which we find in the villages and lone farm-houses. And this is the case with that remarkable series of islands which runs like a row of breakwaters from the Helder to the Weser, and serves as a front to the continent behind them. Such are Ameland, Terschelling, Wangeroog, and the others—each with its dialect or sub-dialect. ”

“ In 836 we find one Horic as king of the Danes; he was probably a son of Godefridus. During his reign there was trouble with the emperor as to the overlordship of Frisia. In the meantime Herioldus remained on friendly terms with Lothair and received a further grant of Walcheren and the neighbouring districts. In 850 Horic was attacked by his own nephews and compelled to share the kingdom with them, while in 852 Herioldus was charged with treachery and slain by the Franks. In 854 a revolution took place in Denmark itself. ”

“ Of how and why the golden helmet is worn, this is the story:
In days gone by, when forests covered the land and bears and wolves were plentiful, there were no churches in Friesland. The people were pagans and all worshipped Woden, whom the Frisians called Fos-i-te'. Certain trees were sacred to him. When a baby was ill, or grown people had a disease, which medicine could not help, they laid the sick one at the foot of the holy tree, hoping for health soon to come. ”

“ The Frisians were spread over a large distance along the shore as far as the mouth of the Elbe, and in the west at least as far as the country north of Haarlem. In the time of the Romans they cannot have extended their power farther southward. ”

“ The traditional freedom of the people of this county, and the still older traditional freedom of the Frisians, confirm the other evidence, anthropological as well as philological, which connects Kent with ancient Friesland. The old laws of the Frisians declare ‘that the race shall be free as long as the winds blow out of the clouds and the world stands.’ [19]
The Frisians, with the Batavians of what is now Holland, came under the dominion of Charlemagne, who confirmed their laws and left them their native customs. ”

“ When the German ocean rolled in over the land, engulfing considerably more than a thousand Frisian villages, it separated kindred peoples, creating not only a geographical but a political chasm between them. West Friesland became absorbed in Holland, but East Friesland continued its career as a confederation of independently governed maritime provinces, until Saxony, hard pressed for funds, sold its sovereignty to the house of Austria for a paltry 350,000 crowns. ”

“ The chain of the Frisian Islands marks the outer fringe of the former continental coast-line, and is separated from the mainland by shallows, known as Wadden or Watten, answering to the maria vadosa of the Romans. Notwithstanding the protection afforded by sand-dunes and earthen embankments backed by stones and timber, the Frisian Islands are slowly but surely crumbling away under the persistent attacks of storm and flood, and the old Frisian proverb “de nich will diken mut wiken” (“who will not build dikes must go away”) still holds good. ”

“ As the boat approached the pier, I remembered what had happened to me at Alkmaar, and was troubled at the thought that I had brought no letters of introduction for Harlingen. I had reason to be troubled, since the Frisian language, which is a mixture of Dutch, Danish, and old Saxon, is almost incomprehensible to the Hollanders themselves; and, as for me, I did not know the first word of it. I was also aware that French was scarcely spoken at all in Friesland. ”

“ Largely compounded of the bravest Teutonic elements, Batavian and Frisian, the race ever battles to the death with tyranny, organizes extensive revolts in the age of Vespasian, maintains a partial independence even against the sagacious dominion of Charlemagne, refuses in Friesland to accept the papal yoke or feudal chain, and, throughout the dark ages, struggles resolutely towards the light, wresting from a series of petty sovereigns a gradual and practical recognition of the claims of humanity. ”

“ Many of the Frisian legends and folk-songs deal with the submerged villages and hamlets, which lie buried beneath the treacherous waters of the Wadden. Heinrich Heine made use of these legends in his Nordseebilder, composed during a visit to Norderney in 1825. The Prussian and Dutch governments annually expend large sums for the protection of the islands, and in some cases the erosion on the seaward side is counterbalanced by the accretion of land on the inner side, fine sandy beaches being formed well suited for sea-bathing, which attracts many visitors in summer. ”

“ Frisian expedition to the North Pole
[iv. 39.] “Archbishop Adalbert, of blessed memory, likewise told us that in his predecessor’s days certain noblemen from Friesland, intending to plough the sea, set sail northwards, because people say there that due north of the mouth of the river Wirraha [Weser] no land is to be met with, but only an infinite ocean. They joined together to investigate this curious thing, and left the Frisian coast with cheerful song. ”

“ He tells us of a people called the Pharadini, a name resembling Varini or Warings, allies of the Angles, who lay next to the Saxons. He mentions also the three islands of the Saxons, which are probably those known now as the North Frisian Islands, north of the coast where the Saxons he mentioned are said to have lived. This is the country that within historic time has been, and still is in part, occupied by the North Frisians. ”

“ From all parts of Saxon Land messengers came flying, with report of fire and sword, bloodshed and sacrilege. The wild forest-folk, Eastphalians, Westphalians, and Engern, had risen to a man, and, under the leadership of Hessi and Alf and Bruno, were rushing to join the standard of the indomitable Wittikind. Last of all came riders from Teutoric, Count of the Frisian Mark. The Frisians were marching eastwards across their fenlands, everywhere slaying and burning, like their Saxon kinsmen. All beyond the Rhine, from Thuringia to the North Sea, the land was aflame. ”