Babbelegûchjes

Minority languages, who even cares about those anymore? Well, on the 17th of March at least 1300 people did, on the Dag van de Grunneger Toal at the Groninger Archieven (on a saturday, mind you!). This day aims to celebrate the language of the Dutch province of Groningen via lectures, a book market and music. The theme of this year was “The survival of Gronings”, and the lectures were centered around this theme. For us, however, the main priority was the task of interviewing other attendees, so unfortunately we could not attend all the interesting lectures that took place. In duos we set out with a tablet and a list of questions to gather data for a master student’s thesis, with the furtherance of science as a consolidation for missing talks of poet Jan Glas and musician Marlene Bakker among others. In addition, the small interviews were also displayed on a television at the day itself. Image 1. The bookmarket These interviews were centered around the language Gronings. Q...

Nature and culture only differ three letters, but the approach we take to them differs quite a bit. In this blog post we will take a closer look at the history of the Wadden Sea as an example of natural heritage and compare it with the cultural heritage example, the Woudagemaal. These two sites form striking dyptich of examples of natural and cultural heritage in Fryslân and will demonstrate what the different approaches towards them are. The Wadden Sea The Wadden Sea is an intertidal zone on the coast of the North Sea, stretching from the northern part of the Netherlands all the way along the German coast into Denmark, totalling about 10.000km ² in area. The landscape is characterized by wetlands and tidal flats, which flood regularly. In June of 2009, the Wadden Sea area was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list . The area is very rich in wildlife and fostered for its biodiversity. Image 1. An overview of a small part of the Wadden Sea. According to Lowenthal (2005...

The fact/news that Leeuwarden is one of the two Cultural Capitals of Europe in 2018 has been hard to miss, especially so if you live in Fryslân. When such a large event is brought to a place, some justification is needed as to why thís city in particular is the right one for the event, and why thís particular event fits so perfectly into the local culture. The campaign that preceded Leeuwarden gaining the honor of the title of Cultural Capital has been a large and costly one, and such a PR campaign can give some interesting insights into the world of commercialization of cultural heritage and history. On the website of Cultural Capital Leeuwarden you can find statements such as “since the dawn of time, the people of Frisia had to work together to achieve their goals. Just look at the Middle Ages, when the Frisian Freedom accomplished that the Frisians did not serve under the rule of any lord. Or look at 1815, when the Netherlands became a kingdom, but with two official languages.” Or...