Terp Villages

Every trip we make to the Netherlands, we discover someone new in our family heritage - often with a new-to-us village that we need to explore. This year it was Welsryp, where Rose Dykstra Buss (Linda's Great-Grandmother) was born. Because this is Friesland, the village is officially known as Wjelsryp. In many towns the sign will show both Fries and Dutch versions on the sign.

Wjelsryp is a "terp village" - a raised area of earth above the marshes and peat bogs. Early residents of this area piled up earth to create dry areas that they could live on. Eventually the mounds were large enough to form a village - and a church was one of the first buildings built. After many centuries the mound has almost disappeared, but you can still see it at the church - it's still the highest point in the town.

It's a challenge to show in a photograph that the land is raised, but here are a couple more attempts.

Here are a couple of other shots from around the village

After Wjelsryp, we moved a little east to Kollum where my Great-great Grandfather Sake Hendriks Riemersma was born in 1823.

It is harder to see the terp in Kollum because of how the town has been built up, but there is some sign in the slope around the church.

Walking around the cemetery and reading the markers is like revisiting the church directory from our youth. There are so many deVries's that it's doubtful that the upper photo is a relative. The lower photo was taken so we could remember the Bible verse "OPENB. 14:13". There are a lot of Dutch words that you can puzzle out because they look a lot like English - not this one. It's an abbreviation for Revelation 14:13.

This church was built starting in the twelfth century with the tower, then expanded in the 1800's. One of the clues about how old it is comes from the window in the tower. It shows just how thick the wall is, and it has a small Romanesque window - quite different from the large Gothic style windows in the newer sections.

This is the only Bok grave in the cemetery. Not a relative that we know of, but Kollum isn't very far from Burum where my Great-great Grandmother Korneliske Hendriks Bok was born.

Burum has a windmolen that is quite unusual. It's a grain grinding mill, but the only mill I have ever seen that has aluminum sails in place of the traditional wooden sails. I had no idea this existed when I was musing at Zandhaas about a modern version of the traditional mill.

We had experienced cloudy skies all day, and it began to rain while we were exploring the churchyard, but on the way home we ran into such heavy rain that we pulled off the highway for some supper and to let the storm move past us. I'm not sure I really captured it, but it was fun to see the raindrops falling against the sun.