Reclamations in early medieval Frisia

Reclamations and floods! Whether it is the construction of dams and ditches by the Cananephates, or the Delta Works of the 1970s; living with and fighting against water is in Dutch nature. An important part of Dutch history would drastically change the landscape and eventually cause a lot of flooding; bog reclamations. Perhaps the best known Dutch reclamations are the peat cuttings of the 19th and 20th centuries or the Great Reclamations of the 13th century. However, one of the first bog reclamations took place much earlier, in early medieval Frisia. Especially in so-called Westflinge, excavations took place very early. More on this in this post!

Boglands

Most of Frisia was uninhabitable in the ninth century. People lived mainly on higher-lying areas, such as the 'strandwallen' (a sort of sand barriers) and silted-up riverbanks in West-Frisia, and the artificial dwellingmounds known as terps and wierden in the terpen-area of Central- and East-Frisia (see our earlier post ‘Landscapes of early medieval Frisia’). Behind the dunes of West Frisia and the salt marshes of the terpen-area, a huge, almost impassable bogland had developed over the course of a thousand years. The peat in this bogland consisted of layers of moss and plant remains that only half decomposed due to the high groundwater level, and had formed metre-high, spongy raised bogs over time. In the north of West Frisia, which is also called Westflinge (= lit. meaning the area west of the Vlie), the bogland extended from present-day Enkhuizen to Texel!

Reclamating the bogs

The boglands were drained for several reasons. First of all, drained bog lent itself perfectly as fertile soil for arable farming. Barley, gold-of-pleasure, horse bean and flax were grown on the highest parts of the bog in the ninth century. The lower parts of the bog were usable as hay fields, pastures or for growing brushwood. Raw materials for industry were also obtained in this area, such as willow and reed stems. The very first traces in Frisia of bog reclamations for the purpose of arable farming were found in Medemblik and dated to the eighth century. Ditches were found in Medemblik that were used to artificially dewater the bog by digging them parallel to small rivers along which people lived. The water from the bog thus drained through the ditch to the river. Similar traces have also been found in nearby Wevershoof and Andijk. From the ninth century onwards, Medemolaca (Medemblik) appears to have been a centre for reclamation in this northern part of West Frisia.

Secondly, the boglands were excavated for peat. For this, mainly the wettest area of the bog was used and often went hand in hand with the use of the bog for arable farming on the higher parts. Specific traces of peat cuttings were found in Zijdewind, just below Schagen. However, cutting peat was not only common in Westflinge: in the treeless salt marshes of central and eastern Frisia, peat was the fuel of choice. Moreover, here peat was considered a building material (see our earlier post ‘Landscapes of early medieval Frisia’).

Lastly, boglands were excavated for the extraction of salt. This process is also known as ‘selnering’. Selnering occurred mainly in places where boglands were flooded by salt seawater for a long time. The salt was extracted in so-called ‘salt pans’ by burning salty peat, mixing the burned material with (sea) water and sifting out the ashes. Salt was then obtained by evaporating the water. This white gold was once an important means of preserving food and as such was a sought-after trade product. For Central-Frisia, the salt extraction sites have been found at the Anjumer Kolken, Workum and the Lauwersmeer area. For West-Frisia, salt extraction is known from the Scheldtland through a description of the phenomenon by the Hispano-Arab traveller, spy and slave trader Ibrahim ibn Yaqub. Despite the various motivations for draining boglands, reclamations in the early middle ages were small-scale and mainly focused on own usage. Large-scale, planned bog reclamations only really took shape during the Great Reclamation of the 12th century.

Flooded villages

However, draining boglands also had major disadvantages. Dewatering the bog exposed the plant remains in the bog to oxygen, causing the plant remains to decompose and the bog to oxidise. This resulted in so-called ‘settling’ of the bog; the bogs collapsed. Floods easily swept away whole areas of bogland as a result of this oxidation and settling. Many a settlement met its end in such a way. The property register of the St Martin's Church in Utrecht mentions some of these doomed, ninth-century settlements: Texalmore, Langenmore, Brettenmore, Ostmore and Geddingmore. Relatively much is known about the latter settlement. Geddingmore - probably precursor to today's Blokhuizen - was in use between the ninth and late twelfth centuries. The village probably had a wooden church and was an estate of the abby of Egmond in the twelfth century. In addition, some skeletons from the Geddingmore cemetery were subjected to radiocarbon dating, from which three of the four individuals were dated to the ninth century (margin resp.; 715-890;772-891;773-951) and one individual to the tenth century (margin; 893-1012). The All Saints Flood of 1170 marked the end for Geddingmore. This and later floods had drastic consequences: the former inland lake Almere became the Zuiderzee due to large chunks of bog being swept away. The Vlie also widened from a river into a channel: modern day West-Friesland and Friesland were now permanently separated.

Conclusion

Large parts of early medieval Frisia were covered with bogs in the eighth and ninth centuries. This post focused specifically on Westflinge, the north of West-Frisia, since this is where the earliest proven reclamations of Frisia began in the eighth century in and around Medemblik. The Frisians drained the boglands for arable farming, peat and salt. However, living on the boglands proved to be risky; the drained bog oxidised and collapsed, causing it to disappear over time and making it susceptible to floods. For this reason, several settlement, such as Geddingmore, were swallowed by the sea in the 12th century. The way of life on the moor must have been completely different from the neighbouring strandwal-landscape of West-Frisia and the terpen-area of Central- and East-Frisia. The boglands had a different subsoil, its own advantages and its own disadvantages. For this reason, the boglands of Westflinge can be considered a separate, complementary landscape type in ninth-century Frisia.

A list of place names referring to reclamations can be found here.