I wish the Frisians made some sort of return—it would fit with my Star Wars title theme a lot better. But there wasn’t really a return. In fact, things kept getting worse. In 772, Charles the Great, the new king of the Franks, invaded the East Frisian lands. After a series of battles against a combined force of Frisians and Saxons, Charles won, and thus took over all the remaining Frisian lands. And even though they launched a couple of uprisings—one in 782 and another in 793—the Franks quickly quelled them. It’s kind of like what would have happened if the Emperor would have killed Luke and the Death Star survived.

In the Summer of 719, Redbod was living the high life. He had just beaten the otherwise-unbeatable Charles Martel, claimed all the southern Rhinelands for Frisia, and returned home with huge amounts of plundered war loot. I imagine we spent most of that summer sipping mead and singing war ballads in his great hall, occasionally swan-diving into his mountains of gold. Evidently, he also spent at least some of his time planning further invasions. By that autumn, he was mobilizing a massive army. An army bred for a single purpose: to destroy the world of the Franks.

Alas, the plundering, pillaging, and conquering was never meant to be. Before the army set out, Redbod became severely sick, and quickly died. This was possibly the most pivotal moment in Frisia’s history. Instead of marching on the Franks with a wealthy and mighty invasion force, the Frisians were now leaderless, directionless, and open to internal strife.

We don’t know the details of the struggle for Redbod’s throne. We’re not sure if it was between his nobles, his sons, or some combination of the two. But there certainly was a struggle, and it certainly took a heavy toll on the Frisians. They were so vulnerable to attack that when Charles Martel led his own invasion force, he annexed not only the Southern Rhinelands, but also most of the lands west of the river Vlie. He met with little resistance.

By at least the early 720’s Poppo finally settled as King of what was left of Frisia. He seems to have reached some sort of treaty with Charles Martel, because the rest of that decade was relatively quiet.

Trouble didn’t start again until 733. Charles, ever the statesman, decided that he wanted to conquer more stuff. He pushed Poppo’s forces back as far as Eastergoa. The next year, the Franks and Frisians met for one last climactic struggle at the Battle of the Boarn. It started off promising—Poppo secretly landed his army in boats, and surprised the Franks. But then it all fell apart. The Franks defeated the Frisians and took over all of West Frisia. Poppo, the Last King of Frisia, died in the battle, thus breaking forever the line of Frisian kings.

In 714, Pepin died. If you’ve been paying attention, you know this meant an opportunity for the Frisians. It also meant a chance at redemption for Redbod. Ever since his defeat at the Battle of Dorestad in 690, he’d been laying low. It’s unclear where he was. Some say he was in the modern province of Friesland. Others that he was in Heligoland—an island in the North Sea that’s so small it’s basically just a big rock with houses on it. But wherever he was, he was under the Frankish radar, and preparing for his grand vengeance.

When Pepin died, he knew his chance had come.

(Historical side note—Popular legend holds that Redbod, the pagan’s pagan, almost converted to Christianity. He even went to a river to be baptized. According to the story, he stood on the windy banks of the river, kingly shawl wrapped around his leathered torso, eyes wild behind his swirling mass of beard and hair. Around him was a small group of monks and priests, his noblemen, and a throng of peasants eager to follow whatever example their king set. Before stepping into the river, however, Redbod turned to Willibrord, the great bishop of Utrecht, and asked if any of his ancestors are in the Christian heaven. Willibrord said they certainly were not, and waved Redbod into the water. Instead, Redbod stopped. He then shoved Willibrord aside and marched up the embankment. Facing his people, the great king thrust his hands toward the sky, proclaiming he would rather be in hell with his ancestors, than in heaven with his enemies. That was the closest the Kingdom of Frisia came to being Christian.)

Redbod quickly marshalled an army of angry Frisians. He then made an alliance with Ragenfrid, the leader Neustria and Burgundy. They marched down the Rhineland, where they met an ill-prepared Charles Martel at the Battle of Cologne. The Frisians routed the Franks, driving Martel into full retreat, and conquering all the southern Rhinelands for Frisia.

Charles Martel went on to have a successful military career. He won myriad campaigns, and even defeated the invading Umayyad caliphate at the Battle of Tours, which most historians list as one of the most important battles in world history.

But that day at Cologne, Charles Martel, the mighty hammer of Europe, lost to the Frisians. It was the only military defeat of Martel’s life, and the high-water mark of the Frisian empire.

If only it could have lasted…..

The war the Frisians fought against the Franks was the first (and, honestly, the last) time the Frisians were players on the continental scene. Although small conflicts started in the early 7th century, and continued through the end of the 8th century, the most important events were between 716 and 734. Through all the twists and intrigues of the battle, a pattern emerged—one empire takes land from another empire and forces its religion upon them. This lasts until the king of the conquering empire dies. Then the leader of the other empire takes back the conquered lands, and imposes his religion. Then that leader dies, and the process repeats…

The first permutation of the pattern happened in 630. The Frankish king Dagobert I, in an attempt to Christianize the notoriously pagan Frisians, seized the outer lowlands and built a church in Utrecht, a town in modern day southern Netherlands. Dagobert held the territory until his death in 650, at which the Frisians promptly took back their territory, drove all the Christians out, and made Utrecht the center of their once-again pagan government.

The next major conflict was in 690. It was between King Radbod of Frisia, and the Frankish Pepin of Herstal, mayor of the palace (for the record, “mayor of the palace” was a title approximating duke. They were powerful nobles who in some cases, as with Charles Martel, were the de-facto rulers). Although Radbod would go on to become perhaps Frisia’s greatest King, he was defeated by Pepin at the battle of Dorestad. The Franks went on to reclaim Utrecht and many other lowland territories, and forced the marriage of Pepin’s son with Redbod’s daughter in 711. I’m sure the wedding reception was awkward.

For the next couple decades, Frisia’s influence declined. But all of this changed in the year 714.

Around AD 400, when the Barbarians were banging their drums toward the gates of Rome, the flooding had receded enough to allow many Frisians to return home. For the first couple centuries after Rome, they kept to themselves. They continued their farming, their sea-trading, and their piracy. But toward the middle of the 7th century, things began to change. Frisia started building an empire.

A couple factors led to Frisia’s 7th century land-grab. One was the emergence of kings. Prior to the 7th century, Frisia did not have a united monarch. They were a collection of loosely-knit tribes sharing the same language and ethnicity, but without any centralized leadership. It’s difficult to say who the first real “King of Frisia” was. The earliest figures are so obscured in a haze of myth and legend that it’s impossible to confirm if they were even real people.

The first historically reliable king is Aldgisl, who reigned around the year AD 680. Although we don’t know their names, his predecessors were likely strong leaders. By the time Aldgisl took the throne, Frisian territory encompassed most of Northern Europe’s lowlands, and was sneaking down the Rhine.

(It’s worth noting that even though we know some facts about Aldgisl, his position is still unclear. Contemporary manuscripts don’t agree on the exact role of these Frisian leaders. Some call them “kings,” while others call them “dukes.” In the interest of making this blog as epic-sounding as possible, we’ll use the term “king”.)

The second factor in Frisian empire-building was the rise of the Franks. As good as things were going for the Frisians, they were going even better for the Franks. They had conquered nearly all their neighboring kingdoms, and had achieved hegemonic rule of most of Western Europe. The pope even gave the newly-Christianized Franks his blessing, declaring them the heirs to the Romans, and a “Holy Roman Empire.”

Like the Frisians, the Franks had their eye on the Rhine. That’s when the trouble started.

Roman Times

For the first centuries of their existence, the Frisians didn’t make too much history. They were content to till their farms, sail their ships, and try not to be gobbled by the next big storm. The first definitive mention of the Frisians is in the year 12 BC. The Roman general Drusus swept through Frisian lands and exacted a tribute. Although Tacitus implies that the victory was easy and decisive, the Frisians didn’t seem too concerned about winning. In fact, they even accompanied Drusus on his campaigns further up the North Sea. And when his boat ran aground because of the extreme tides, the Frisians came to his rescue.

For the next thirty years, Frisia and Rome had a good relationship. Frisia remained friendly as Rome battled neighboring tribes, and Frisia gave Rome a yearly tribute of ox pelts. But in the 20’s AD, things started getting ugly. Olennius, a former centurion, was appointed the new governor. He demanded an absurdly heavy tribute from the Frisians. So heavy that many had to sell their wives and children just to pay it.

As you may imagine, this made them angry. They petitioned Olennius to lighten the tribute, but he ignored them. So they revolted.

Their first step was to assemble a mob and storm the residence of the Roman tax collector. Although we can’t be sure, I imagine torches and pitchforks were involved. After hanging the tax collector, the Frisians prepared for war.

Frisia fought the Roman armies under propraetor Lucius Apronius at the Battle of Baduhennawood in AD 28. Although the outcome of the battle itself was indecisive, it was a de facto win for the Frisians for a couple reasons. First, the Romans suffered far greater casualties than the Frisians did. Second, the Romans stopped exacting a tribute, and Emperor Tiberius did not try to punish the Frisians for their rebellion. Frisia was free once again. In case you’re keeping score at home, that’s Frisia 1, Rome 0.

Rome has fallen. Next comes what your high school textbook called “The Dark Ages.” When I heard the term “Dark Ages,” I used to think of bands of shrivelled peasants huddled together against the swirling snow on a rocky patch of soil, dropping from exhaustion as bishops whacked them on their heads with scrolls. The fact that Rome was conquered by hordes of growling Barbarians was an awful thing for civilization as a whole. It was not, however, awful for the Frisians. In fact, the Dark Ages marked Frisia’s peak as a world empire.

During the later classical period, the Frisians hit a rough patch. Flooding was so bad in their North Sea homeland that they started mass migrations. A large group went to modern day Flanders. Another group joined the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons in their invasion of Britain. The Frisians had a profound impact on England. Many contemporaries viewed it as a largely Frisian territory. The 6th century Byzantine historian Procopius, when describing the peoples of England, listed only the Saxons and the Frisians. In the 11th century, the Danish epic poem Knútsdrápa used the terms “Frisian” and “English” interchangeably.

(Cinematic side note—remember the 2004 movie King Arthur? Don’t feel bad if you don’t. It was pretty awful. Rushed story telling. Sloppy historical references. Cliched battle scenes. The main reason I saw it was Keira Knightley’s leather war bikini. Anyway, the film’s antagonists were Saxon invaders who were eventually driven back by King Arthur as played by the dashing Clive Owen. If the movie were historical, the Saxons would have been accompanied by a large group of Frisians. Don’t worry about the loss to Arthur, by the way—when he died a couple decades later, the Saxons and Frisians swept through England in an easy conquest.)

Frisian influence was especially strong in the English region of East Anglia. Historians have long wondered at why East Anglian cultural practices differ so sharply from their neighbors. Historian George C. Homans suggests this was because the Frisian influence there was so strong. Modern DNA tests on males from East Anglia and Friesland show there is still a strong genetic link. Even today, Frisian is the language that most closely resembles English.

In leaving their flood-ravaged homeland, the Frisians stumbled onto a lucrative living in conquest and colonization. Besides England, the Frisians also established outposts in Scotland, Norway, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark. This spurred a thriving trade empire that spanned from Russia to Britain. So renowned were the Frisians as traders and seafarers that in the Dark Ages the North Sea was known as the Mare Frisia.

The Frisians also established themselves in another, less reputable, profession—piracy. By the mid-third century, Frisian pirates were notorious for raiding Roman ships and outposts in Briton. This grand piracy tradition continued throughout the next millennium. In the 16th century, Frisia’s greatest folk hero, Grotte Pier, raised funds for his revolutions through piracy.

Perhaps the very first residents of Frisia were the Corded Ware people. This loosely-knit culture, named by an uncreative archeologist for the decorations on their clay pots, migrated to Northern Europe as early as 3000 BC. Besides the pots, they’re also known for their battle axes, and for their unique practice of burying their dead in a single grave. They were also the first group to introduce metal into Northern Europe.

(Archeological side-note—I think calling this pioneering people group the “Corded Ware Culture” is both demeaning and depressing. A whole culture, a whole way of life, reduced to a clay decoration. Think if that happened to us. I picture an archeologist from the year AD 7800 giving a lecture to his students at the University of Mars. He talks about American civilization around AD 2000, but he only knows it from a collection of random junk. No records of our art or architecture have survived except for some twisted metal around the base of a Wal-Mart. “Their building materials consisted of low-grade steel and a crude early form of glass” he declares to his enraptured students. No literature remains—Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy have all been lost. The only writings are scraps of a phone book, “The keeping of numerical records was evidently of the utmost importance. The exact function of these listed names and digits is unknown. Whether they corresponded to astrological charts, told primitive fortunes, or suggested lucky numbers pleasing to their gods is a matter of conjecture.” They also found a partial copy of a novel, “That the writing system of these people was undeveloped is evidenced by what was probably their greatest literary achievement, a work about lusty blood-sucking teenagers roughly translated as ‘Evening,’ or ‘Twilight.’” Since they found a box of twinkies next to a clump of ding-dongs, they call us the “cellophane wrapper” civilization. There. Now don’t you feel bad about the Corded Ware?)

The Corded Ware culture eventually gave way to other people with uncreative names, such as the Bell-Beaker culture. Whether any of them were direct ancestors of the Frisians is debatable. But it is clear that the region of modern-day Frisia was populated by at least 750 BC. That’s when we find the first evidence of terpen, which were artificial mounds of earth built to keep buildings safe from floods.

During this time, the Frisians emerged as a unique Germanic tribe. They were, however, closely related to other tribes. Roman historian Tacitus listed them as a sub-group of a larger German people called the Ingvaeones, which also included the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. The Frisians later joined forces with these tribes to conquer Britain. Modern DNA studies confirm that all Germanic people, including the Frisians, are ethnically very similar.

Frisia is a cluster of districts latched onto the North Sea, stretching from Northern Holland in the Netherlands, past Germany, and up to the southern border of Denmark. Frisia is often divided into three parts—West, East, and North. West Frisia is in the Netherlands, and includes portions of the Dutch provinces of North Holland, Drenthe, and Groningen, as well as all the province of Friesland.

East Frisia is in the German state of Lower Saxony. Its districts include Aurich, Leer, Wittmund, the city of Emden, and parts of Saterland. It’s perhaps worth noting that the district bordering east of Wittmund is also called “Friesland.” Unfortunately, its citizens refuse to be included in East Frisia. Don’t ask me why.

North Frisia is in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It’s mainly the district of Nordfriesland and (depending on who you ask) the district of Dithmarschen.

I’m tempted to include more districts, but I don’t want to offend any German people. While there are some districts—such as Friesland in the Netherlands and Nordfriesland in Scleswig-Holstein—that are almost entirely Frisian, many of the other districts have only pockets of Frisians surrounded by regular Dutch or Germans. So I played the territorial claims conservatively. If there’s one thing Frisian history teaches us, it’s that we’re content to tend our farms and mind our own business. Unless, of course, you raise the taxes to unreasonable levels. In that case, we’ll most likely storm the government office, hang the tax collector, and start a revolution.

Another feature of the Frisian islands is their natural splendor. There are few places along the coast that aren’t a national park, wildlife sanctuary, or some other sort of preserve. In fact, UNESCO designated the entire Wadden Sea as a world heritage site.

The Wadden Sea is dominated by the tide. Each day has two full tidal cycles, which means that the space between high tide and low tide is about six hours. During low tide, an expanse of 10,000 square kilometers of mudflats are exposed. It’s then possible to walk across this area—the bottom of the Wadden Sea—from island to island. It’s not uncommon to see farmers drive their buggies across the flats to the mainland. Hiking across the flats is something of a Frisian pastime. There’s even an official name for it—wadloppen.

The Wadden Sea is the largest uninterrupted area of mudflats and intertidal sand bars in the world. It’s also one of the most important stopping places for migratory birds. At any given time, there are as many as six million birds around the Wadden Sea. In a typical year, as many as twelve million birds pass through it. (UNESCO SITE)

And bio-diversity isn’t limited to birds. The area is also home to grey seals, harbour seals, and harbour porpoises. Its has large populations of butterflies, and the ever-lovely lugworm.