Footsteps in the clay

Towards a new awareness for the Bildts language Gerard Marcel de Jong December 2017, Pasaia San Juan/Donostia/St.-Anne

Preface

In 1984, my grandfather Gerryt Dirks – the man who embodied de Bildtse Post all his life, and gave his life for the Bildts cause – had the cameras of Dutch television show ‘Van Gewest tot Gewest’ as guests in his office, on the news floor of the paper I now run. They were doing an item about the future of and threats to the Bildts language – even back then, over thirty years ago. The presenter asks him: ‘How much time do you give 't Bildts before it’s extinct?’ He smiles briefly. ‘That’s a good question…” My grandfather strokes his letter opener, looks up, ponders for a bit, and decides: ‘I give 't Bildts as long as I live.’

Since January 1st 2018, the municipality ’t Bildt has ceased to exist. After 513 years, Bildts autonomy has come to an end, dissolving into the new Waadhoeke municipality. With the disappearance of autonomy, the language and culture will come under more pressure too. Not that this is anything new: Bildts has been under pressure my whole life. Through the Oare Wurden / Other Words project, I, a Bilkert, was allowed to stay in the Spanish Basque Country last May and June. There, at the Bay of Biscay, in the proximity of San Sebastián (Donostia in Basque), I had the freedom to live and work in ‘Hugoenea’, and I witnessed how proud the Basques are of their identity, language and culture. My stay turned into a quest about identity, the universal nature of ‘ownness’, the unique of minority languages, and what one can do to protect and expand a small language as Bildts.

1 1. Threats come with opportunities

The Basque Writers Association lets out Hugoenea throughout the whole year to writers who work in a minority language. ‘Hugo’s House’ is named after Victor Hugo, the French writer who was inspired by nature in this small fisherman’s village, the views across the sea, and the intrinsically good people of the Basque Country. The apartment is located at the photogenic village square. Buoyant houses, little bars, striking faces that color the local life. In the beginning, the looks were turned inward, but once the ice broke and we opened up to each other, a special bond came to life – a cultural exchange, one of giving and receiving stories about our own languages and cultures. I came to the Basque Country reasonably prepared: I read books, learned about their history, language and culture. But it’s the people who make a language, a culture and even a history, who carry it and pass it on. I left the books and stepped into their world. And it was a mutual adventure: the Basque people were eager to dive in and learn about Bildts. A whole slew of Basques – both young and old, from the ‘common man’ to the cultural elite – knows more about Bildts now than many a Dutchman.

My stay in the Basque Country made me realize why the Basques are so proud of their idiosyncrasy, language and culture. I’ve seen how tirelessly they carry it out and cherish it, even when there are obstacles in the way. Donibane, the village where I stayed, is a small, tight-knit community that keeps its traditions alive, and raises a fist in unison when called upon. A village where the Ikurriña, the Basque flag, dangles from the balconies, and where graffiti on the walls (‘Etxerra!’: bring them home) begs the Spanish government to allow the sons and daughters of the region – who were arrested either justly or unjustly, usually accused of ties with ETA – to be brought back to Gipúzcoa, the most Basque province. To be brought home.

Europe seems to be whirling into an era of post-globalization. Brussels flew too close to the sun; it went too fast for many people. ‘Unity through diversity’ is what it should have been, but perhaps the desire for unity pushed diversity to the emergency exit. Post-globalization, the stare is aimed mostly inwards again. Grievously, this seems to go hand in hand with (extreme) nationalism, xenophobia, and a severe lack of empathy and solidarity.

2 The United Kingdom chose Brexit, Italian regions want more autonomy, and of course we now see the fight for the independence of the Catalans: examples that are in themselves incomparable – the origins for each differ profusely – but have in common the advocation of (regional) identity and the protection of culture. ‘t Bildt was imposed a contrary fate by the powers that be: my municipality has ceased to exist as per January 1st 2018. After 513 years Bildts autonomy has come to an end. Dictated by The Hague, and embraced by the province and the Bildts council, the municipality dissolved into the new Waadhoeke municipality. Reasons of ‘efficiency’, ‘batting power’, ‘being able to face challenges’ have been offered: claptrap disguised as common sense to get rid of small municipalities.

Now, the Basques and the Bilkerts are incomparable in nearly every way. The Basques have been through an unimaginable amount of suffering. Blood was shed and lives were lost to keep alive the pulse of their language and culture. Bilkerts have had it so much easier. We’ve not lost lives defending the right to speak our language; we’ve not been tortured, arrested and silenced. The Basques have. And they still are, just like the Catalans. I’ve met them. I’ve spoken to them. I’ve seen the impact of this oppression. You barely hear it, but it’s still happening, in 2018. We Bilkerts can count ourselves lucky that we never had to go through that ordeal. But we do fight for the same cause. At a different scale, in a different country, under a different political constellation. But our goal is shared: the preservation of Bildts and Basque.

As a Bilkert, entwined with the fate of the Bildts language – the Bildts language has shaped my identity, shaped who I am – I’ve been granted a look behind the curtains of a people who do their utmost to preserve their language and guard over their own culture. Next to writing my Bildts novella ‘Blau fan dagen, griis fan ônrust’ (Blue of days, grey of unrest), a key objective of my stay was to research the question: what is identity? How can one guard and preserve a minority language? Can one fight for one’s own small language and culture and also keep an open mind – without it becoming a quest of nationalism? I myself loathe flag- waving nationalism. Especially when what it boils down to is shutting out other people. I’m wholly indifferent towards the Dutch flag and national anthem.

3 But a flag, I’ve learned in the Basque Country, can mean things other than nationalism or ‘pride’ alone, as long as the context is understood, and, especially, the desire behind it.

Despite all the differences between Basques and Bilkerts, it’s crystal clear that ‘identity’ and minority languages share a universal character. At the heart are aspects we both deal with and fight for – because that’s what we have to do. Half-jokingly I’ve been referred to as an ‘ambassador of Bildts’ because of my participation in this project. But it’s how I sincerely felt it, when I disseminated the Bildts language and culture in the Basque Country, knowing how many Bilkerts trusted me with that task. I’ve come to embrace that role bestowed upon me: to do for the Bildts language whatever I can do, in all modesty. With my newspaper, with poetry, with this project. Soon with literature, now already with this essay. That’s what this is all in aid of: contributing to a future for the language. The rejection of the official language status and the redivision of municipalities are a threat to Bildts, that much is clear. But that threat comes with opportunities, and maybe even a new awareness: I've seen this happening to a lot of Bilkerts over the past year. And there is fertile ground for this beautiful, stubborn, rugged, raw, romantic language. Bildts deserves a new consciousness, a new wave of emancipation, a status in a time ahead that’s full of challenges.

Today, there are 6,000 people who speak this unique language. Death is the ultimate fate of a small language, but I can’t predict when the last Bildts speaking person will die. It begins and ends with us, the speakers. And its fate doesn’t mean that a language or culture can’t be supported by a government, that you can’t do anything about it because “it will disappear anyway”. There are a lot of options – as long as there’s the realization of how special the Bildts language is – first and foremost by the Bilkerts themselves.

4 2. Bermeo

We’re driving along the pointy, rocky coast of the Basque Country, from Donostia (San Sebastián, in the Basque province of Gipúzcoa) to Bermeo (in the Basque Viscaya). The wind and sea have shaped this coastline over thousands of years. The elements have chosen a remarkable ‘design’: there are no straight lines. No ten metres are alike.

At certain points the water streams just about far enough inland, as if it was nature’s divine plan, that, thousands of years later, in the Middle Ages, small villages could arise, sheltered from the mighty sea. Villages where fishermen could safely create a haven and a base from which to set out onto the unpredictable Gulf of Biscay, to return home with fish. The perfect home, made possible by nature. It brought the Basques wealth: they sailed the biggest seas around the globe, long before the great seafarers of the Renaissance. From Bilbao, Donostia and all the small places in between, the Basques were the first to reach Greenland and Canada. They were the first whalers, the first savvy enough to build ships that would be able to survive such journeys, the first who understood that you need to salt your food so it lasts longer. A clever people, the Basques. But their land they did not carve out for themselves. They have nature to thank for that. They make do with what has been given to them. The Basques are as much a mountain people as they are a coastal people. They live in big, impressive cities, but just as well inhabit many rural villages with 400 or fewer people living there. They’re inventive and encompass the best of both extremes. Through the ages, the capricious sea has forced itself through stone and earth, which has led to a mosaic coast: coves, protrusions, bays, ‘pasajes’. A small beach here, a moloch of massive stone there. The versatility of the Basque landscape is mirrored in the people: make do with what you’re given, be flexible and able to change gears, but do it all in order to unite, to become one.

It’s a shiny day in May. Never too hot, here, like it can be in the inlands of Spain, but sultry, with a refreshing salty air. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful?,” I’m asked several times while we’re driving along the coast. I’m struggling for words.

5 “Yes, beautiful,” is what I keep replying. It’s crackling and sizzling in the car: we’re like kids on a school trip, delirious, talking about literature and life and love. Partners in crime. Each with his own English accent, with a different background, but with the same ambition.

I’m from reclaimed, flat polder-soil. No mountains, no coves. Nature – more or less – had the same in mind for Friesland as for the Basque Country. The old Middelsee dug deep into the Frisian land with the curve of a banana. Leeuwarden was at sea. ‘t Bildt was but a dream. But the Middelsee slowly sludged up, and on February 22nd, 1505, it was decided this land would be dammed and poldered in – it was decided to create it. In 261 days the Oudebildtdijk was raised, including two sluices, by some 700 to 1500 men, mostly from the South of Holland. The origin of my birth ground, and therefore of me, comes from a 15th century drawing table. The Mondriaan-esque straight lines were etched into parchment well before they became real. The fertile soil was a logical effect of the process of reclaiming land from the sea. A people, the Bildts language, a culture: those weren’t invented. They were yet to come. Even on a thought-up, stolen piece of land, a community with its own language organically arose. A raw, unruly, romantic language; a soil in Friesland always most welcoming to any social revolution, and until well into the last century, also known as the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ of Friesland.

In many respects, this is the exact opposite of the history of the Basque Country. And yet, this Bilkert sits in the car together with a couple of young Basque writers, driving along the coast from Donostia to Bermeo, a picturesque fishermen’s village. We're going there because it’s the hometown of a young Basque writer. On the way we pass Gernika (Guernica), the place that in 1936, during the Civil War, through a pact between Franco and Hitler, was ruthlessly bombed into oblivion by the Luftwaffe. From the mass grave of Gernika, generations of Basques sprung and flourished, embracing their language and culture even more, because the vulnerability of it had been laid bare throughout their history. Because, so many times, others had tried to destroy it. Even the young writers with me in the car feel it deeply within them. It was inherited from the generations above them, but in 2017 they still embrace it passionately, each in their own way. We ‘stop’ at Gernika and talk about it, but we don’t end there. We drive on.

6 On this day, we all are steeped in freedom, in the excitement of being with our equals – which is a sort of homecoming. That strong feeling that we’re all working on the same dream, and being able to share that.

It had been an old watchtower. A square post to look out from, built on the highest rock of fishing village Bermeo. 'Picturesque' might seem like a hollow concept by now, but trust me, Bermeo is picturesque. Colourfully painted houses along the seaside, the Basque coast that disappears into the mist while your eyes look for the horizon, boats bobbing in the harbour. The building had operated as a seaside watchtower for ages – to be able to see stranded whales, to catch smugglers, or to sign to other watchtowers that the enemy – the Spaniards, or the Guardia Civil on water – was on its way. Now, in 2017, it’s a tiny but oh so cozy café, there on the highest rock with the prettiest view. Ekaitz had bought it with two friends. This way, he can afford to be a writer, by sharing bar shifts with them. He says he chose this path to pursue his dream of becoming a Basque writer. It’s what all writers say there – with great certainty, yet also a kind of nonchalance, as if it’s no big deal. The newest generation of Basque writers – people in their twenties, early thirties – doesn’t seem to perceive it as making a choice to become a writer, but rather the other way around: Basque writing chose them.

The most important building block of identity is language. I won’t shy away from that disposition. Like troubadour Jan de Vries sings – ‘Ik hew ‘t altyd weten, ‘t is de taal, dat maakt ‘t ferskil’ (I’ve always known, it’s the language, that’s what makes the difference) – everything begins and ends with the language we speak, with which we relate to the other person. We connect with each other through language. There are no other means. Identity is language.

The Basques know this. They know this because of the hardest lesson taught: suppression. During the Franco regime, Basques until 1975 weren’t allowed to speak Basque in public. I’ve met many a Basque who spoke emphatically about the repercussions. If an unaware five year old at school would say ‘eskerrik asko’ – ‘thank you’ in Basque – instead of the Spanish ‘gracias’, they’d be hit on the fingers with a ruler, be made to stand in the corner, punished.

7 A child would ‘know better’ next time, but adults could be arrested if they spoke Basque in public, and tortured, if they were unlucky. A lot of people were unlucky. The Franco regime saw language diversity as a form of resistance, as undercutting authority. It was crudely suppressed. “For ‘t Bildts, it would be best if the Frisians would say tomorrow: from now on Bildts is forbidden. Then you’ll see counteraction. Then your language will flourish.” At least two different people told me this same thing in the Basque Country. Oppression, a crackdown, leads to a strong counter movement. The Basques themselves are the first to admit it’s this oppression that partly led to Basque thriving.

Because that’s what it does. All children in the Basque Country receive Spanish and Basque education. You can find every utterance in Basque: literature, children’s books, film, the media. Children hear ‘elderly’ speak Basque in their village of town, like mum and dad, and incorporate that. It doesn’t stop when they close the front door behind them and step into the wide world. Because that world is Basque, too, or at least bilingual. School’s Basque. Media. Museums. Place signs. Kids are fed both Basque and Spanish, in truly every walk of life. Let me be crystal clear: we as Bilkerts should be grateful to not have such a terrible, violent history as the Basques. Bilkerts have never been suppressed – not by the Dutch, not by Frisians – for the language we speak. To wish for oppression because it will lead to a meaningful reaction would be silly. So this is not a comparison between Basques and Bilkerts. But I have seen what we can learn from the Basques. It is precisely this contrast in which our opportunities lie. The Basques have set up education in their own language, inspired by the thought: 'Never again. We won’t be suppressed. We speak what we speak, and we feel that’s important. Let’s pass this on to a new generation'.

“To teach Bildts in schools is a moral obligation to our children,” said teacher and activist for Bildts in education Henk Kas in 1979, my year of birth. And we can, with the great advantage that we can make this happen from a peaceful starting position, as long as there’s enough support for it; as long as we Bilkerts really want it. Bildts should become a course in all primary schools on Bildts soil.

8 In theory it should already be that way, but reality proves to be obstinate. In primary school ‘t Fonnemint in St.-Anna, for example, kids receive excellent Bildts education. But that’s solely because they’ve a Bildts teacher who knows the language and is a good educator. Other schools in the Bildts area aren’t as lucky. There, children don’t have Bildts lessons, because there’s no-one who can or wants to teach it. It’s the Achilles heel of an extremely small language as Bildts: few people, little expertise. It’s capricious.

On the door of the watchtower that now functions as a café, they’ve painted the word ‘hoi’, as a greeting for me. They’d looked up if it was correct Bildt! Ekaitz has made pintxos that are displayed on the bar. The wind that blows around the place is gently approving, with some fierce gusts of optimism. Yoseba stopped short his career at the university – tired of the ivory towers of the academic world – and went back to teaching at a secondary school, to free more time for writing. Ekaitz bought this café to be able to write in his spare time. The Benjamin of my company, Beatriz, is a restless soul, who's lived abroad (England, China, Italy, Indonesia) since she was 17. She realizes that day: “Each time when I leave, it makes the returning more special, makes me more appreciative of Basque”. And I take upon myself the running of de Bildtse Post, carrying the torch of my grandfather. There, in the car to Bermeo, I dare to say that I take that task upon myself, that it is my goal, fighting for ‘t Bildt. For the first time it converges perfectly with who I am.

9 3. Our Words

Gure hitzak Our words

Gure hitzak, Our words, Esan berriz esan Say it again and again Ez daitezela ahaztu They can’t be forgotten Ez daitezela gal, They won’t be lost, Elur gainean Like the graceful Txori hanka arinek Traces, the footsteps Utzitako arrasto sail That slender-legged birds ederra bezalaxe Leave behind in the snow.

Ons worden

Ons woorden, Sêg ‘t opnij en opnij Kinne niet fergeten worre Sille niet ferloren gaan, As de grasjeuze Sporen, de foetstappen Die’t dunne feugelpoatsys achterlate in de snee.

‘Gure Hitzak’, a song by Mikel Laboa, based on the words of writer Bernardo Atxaga. (translations: Gerard Marcel de Jong)

“Basque is a broken instrument.” These were the words of writer Eider Rodriguez last June in Ernst Lluch, a cultural center in the catacombs of the Anoeta stadium, home to Real Sociedad. In light of my stay there, a public debate was organized about literature and minority languages, with several prominent Basque writers. A broken instrument, that’s what Bildts feels like too at times. A tool of which you’re not quite sure what the use is, what it does. There’s nothing you can’t express in Bildts – it’s my mother tongue, my entire emotional range is embedded in that language – but its scope is so very tiny. This already goes for Basques and Frisians who write in their own language, let alone Bildts. I’d told the presenter, journalist Iñigo Astiz, about my hopes of by writing a novella – ‘Blau fan dagen, griis fan ônrust’: ‘Blue of days, grey of unrest’ – to start a Bildts literary tradition. Or to present a first building block onto which others can build further.

10 “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into,” he said. “Your first book could effectively murder the tradition you want to start.” He was obviously joking, but it also rang true. How do you write a literary work in your own language that lacks a literary tradition? Can you escape the spectre that forever haunts an endangered language: that writing in Bildts is, in some way, inherently about the existence or disappearance of Bildts? Can Bildts be an honest, expressive written language, without it implicitly always being about Bildts itself? Can language exist outside itself?

Big questions. Questions I struggle with, but questions that – and this is reassuring for me – are still very much alive in the Basque Country (and, closer to home, are also relevant for Frisian writers). The very fact that these questions are being asked is a healthy sign. As a writer you want to go beyond the literality of language. You want to take it to a higher level. Beyond the literal, to the metaphorical, the abstract, to a meta-use of it. Not for a language to be just that, but that it can be that, too. The vulnerability of a small language always seems to look over your shoulder, always lets you know it’s there. I’m highly aware of this when I write Bildts prose. It’s a pitfall difficult to escape – that when I write in Bildts, a lot of the times it turns out I’m also writing about the vulnerability of the language. It’s very difficult not to give in to that. But I do believe it can be done.

The Basque writer and bestselling author Bernardo Atxaga – his story collection Obabakoak (about a fictitious Basque village called Obaba) sold tens of thousands, and was translated into more than 20 languages – came up with a striking metaphor for small languages. “The vulnerability of a minority language is like footsteps of a slender-legged bird in the snow.” Those tiny sticks in fresh-fallen snow. The bird, using all his might, to leave a footprint. But it only takes a minute and its traces are erased by newer snowflakes. The snow cover is virgin white again, as if the bird never walked there. Everyone who speaks or writes in a minority language will surely recognize that feeling of going against the grain. We leave our footprints behind, but have to keep walking over the same pack of snow to keep them visible. And some, like me, are crazy enough to keep doing it. Because we don’t know how not to.

11 The Basque writer Ramon Saizarbitoria sees it differently. According to him, the small size of a language is a blessing, not a curse. Its small scale is liberating, because the language extorts itself from the market laws of ‘majority literature’. Minority language writers shouldn’t be afraid of that ghost – that ghost of the impending disappearance of our language, always lurking around the corner. Instead, open the door for the possibilities, the prospects it brings. Write in your own language. Read it to your children. Speak it. Think and dream it. No-one can stop you from doing it. But use it. Our language is our identity. So don’t let thoughts of pragmatism or inferiority divert us from that. If you want to become rich, Bildts probably isn’t the language you should write in. But for a Bilkert it’s not about becoming rich, it’s about speaking and writing in his or her language. The riches are already present: it’s our own language. What remains is a freedom that resembles anarchy. Embrace that.

4. Not the biggest? Then certainly the smallest!

“If you can’t be the biggest, perhaps you should aim to be the smallest. That’s quite something in itself,” said Bildts historian Aldert Cuperus very succinctly in ‘My Bildt, you are a kingdom’, a recent documentary about het Bildt, made by Albert Jensma and broadcast on national television. Jensma approached me last spring: he wanted to make a film about het Bildt and the Bilkerts, that special enclave on the Wadden coast that ceases to exist this year. I immediately told him I’d try and help him out, not least because he had a very loving approach to the subject. The fact that Bildts is so very small, that it just nearly has 6,000 speakers, is a great part of why it’s so attractive to people from outside het Bildt. It triggers the imagination in a way that Bilkerts themselves underestimate. In Basque Country, people fell off their seats once they heard that only 6,000 daily speak the language, and yet that it’s used in a newspaper, in books, and that there are organisations for preserving the language. Jensma isn’t the only one who highlighted Bildts in this last year before the redivision of municipalities. Never before has there been more attention from the media for Bildts as in this year, 2017.

12 That the municipality het Bildt would cease to exist was already determined in 2014. In April 2016 the definite decision was made by the council. (An aside: the Basques thought this was obscene. ‘How can your own Bildts council decide to discontinue het Bildt?!” I’ve had great difficulty trying to explaining this to them. I didn’t succeed. And in the end I didn’t even want to try anymore. Rationally, it can be dryly explained; emotionally it is all sorts of wrong).

The one thing that hurt Bilkerts the most, the trouble the politicians inflicted upon their selves, was that there never was a referendum. The reign never dared to. The participation evenings – held in all seven Bildt villages – sufficed for them, to ‘gauge the atmosphere’. And the law was on their side, even though all of these seven evenings were alike: anger about the discontinuing of the municipality, and the fact the people weren’t asked about their opinion on it. Because of this, as newspaper de Bildtse Post, we decided to poll it ourselves. 72% of the Bilkerts were against. Our research quickly came under fire from the same politicians after publishing the results. Of course. It didn’t fit their agenda, their chosen ‘path forward’. The fact that Bildts has received so much media attention this year, is not thanks to, but rather despite the Bildts politicians. It’s the Bilkerts themselves who, louder as ever, beat the drum. The petition to get Bildts recognized under the European Treaty of Minority Languages, signed by hundreds of Bilkerts in mere weeks. The multitude of television crews that came to visit, the written articles, the week Radio1 broadcasted from het Bildt every day for a week. My journey, as a Bilkert in a Frisian program, to the Basque Country. (And on the evening of the day I heard I had been chosen to go abroad, I met a radio documentary maker for the VPRO. She heard about het Bildt, the Bildts language, de Bildtse Post, the end of the municipality and decided: I have to do something with this. She’s been following me all year and went to Donostia to see me, all for a radio documentary of 45 minutes, which will be broadcast in January 2018).

I don’t believe she’s doing that because of me, per se, but it’s yet another example of someone from outside of het Bildt who hears about us and our language, and is intrigued. Because it’s different even from Frisian, because the municipality after so many years will disappear, because way up there in the North people are trying to preserve this language, day in day out. Beating the drum and asking for attention isn’t really our ‘modus operandi’.

13 But even Bilkerts must realize that we don’t have to scream and shout to tell our story. If there’s one thing I’ve experienced this year, is that all it takes is an engaged listener, and interest is piqued – with Frisians, ‘Hollanders’ or Basques. We have not realized this enough, at least until recently – realised how special our language is. The fact that our story really does travel beyond the borders of municipalities, provinces and even our country, reflects well upon us Bilkerts.

Bildts is being taken seriously. It’s no longer the laughing stock of Dutch language, like it used to be. My grandfather, Gerryt Dirks de Jong, was invited to the Dutch media capital Hilversum, in the Eighties, as director of ‘Stichting Ons Bildt’. At the popular radio show ‘Spijkers met Koppen’ he was allowed to say something about Bildts. He’d prepared himself thoroughly, and was ready as he’d ever be. He was so proud that he would get to tell Dutch people about his small language, on national radio! It was a shambles. Humiliated and disgusted, he returned to het Bildt. It had been the single most shameful experience of his life. Instead of interest or curiosity, the talk didn’t go beyond ‘can you speak normally?’, ‘what a strange little language’ and so on. He was being ridiculed, for the audience and listeners to laugh at. That they had abused his beloved Bildts language for the sake of humour hit him hard. I’ve remembered this all too well. I too have seen camera crews coming here, from the West, only to shoot a degrading, stereotypical item. But I dare to claim that times have really changed when it comes to that. The idea of a ‘small’, regional identity is increasingly gaining traction. Writing project Oare Wurden / Other Words is in itself an example of this: bringing attention to minority languages in Europe. To put the hidden riches of language we have here in Europe in the spotlight; to show that diversity binds. I’ve experienced it firsthand. The Basques are equally interested in Bildts – no matter how much it differs from Basque – because there are so many similarities between the two. We both fight for the same cause – for our language. That makes us into who we are.

I’m not 'proud' of Bildts. It was merely passed on to me. I am proud however of how the Bilkerts – at long last – have manifested themselves, told our story, stuck up for the language, young and old alike, with limited means and a relatively small group of people.

14 To me, that proves that a new awareness on Bildts is coming into existence, at this crucial point in our history. That we not only aren’t ashamed of Bildts, but are starting to actively propagate it. That didn’t happen twenty years ago, not in this way. Perhaps the redivision of municipalities has been the catalyst: the perception of the language has grown up, along with a new awareness of its beauty and the importance of carrying it on. I’m very curious how things will be this year, when the media circus has left town and died down; if we can hold on to this, once we’re merely the eastern part of the new municipality Waadhoeke – ‘Waddenhoek’ in Bildts. After last year, more than ever, I believe we can. That we can build on from this – perhaps just like Cuperus said, as the smallest – culturally, societally and literarily. Lasting footsteps in fresh snow. Footsteps that will no longer be snowed under.

5. Footsteps in the clay

The official language status for Bildts was rejected last year. That’s disappointing, and feels like a depreciation, more so because the criteria are so black and white. The political reigns. In Ronald Plasterk, the Bilkerts met a wholly unwilling Secretary of State, who had the final say. While the scientific research hasn’t come close to reaching a conclusion, Bildts is seen as one of the most interesting linguistic cases. Language, mixed language or dialect? To be continued. It takes nothing away from the fact that for the 6,000 people who speak Bildts, it is just a language. ‘Just’ as in: it is what we speak, it’s what we use to communicate with each other. For Bildts, it is of the essence to find allies. And they’re out there, more than ever. The new municipality Waadhoeke can count on a province that solidly backs multilingualism. The official status may have been rejected, but the province of Fryslân more than ever guards the preservation of Bildts. This responsibility has been cemented in their language policy recently, and signed by all concerned mayors. The message of the province – with deputy Sietske Poepjes leading the way – is: protect the richness of your multilingualism. We’ve got funds reserved for it, but if you neglect it, you’ll hear from us.

15 The province of Fryslân has become an ally. How very different it was 40 years ago, when for the first time Bilkerts really stood up for their language, against the imminent threat of Frisian education on het Bildt. It was the trigger for the first Bildts movement, the movement my grandfather and many others were part of. The wave of the second Bildts movement currently rolls onto global shores. A generation younger than the first group of fighters. In a different world, amid a different media landscape, through different times. With a greater reach, through social media for example, the ‘story’ of Bildt(s) resonates more than ever. The torch has been passed on and now lies in younger hands. For a tiny language as ‘t Bildts, it's already quite something that we can soundly tell the next generation that Bildts, indeed, will stick around for a while. I hope my generation can make sure we pass on the torch as well. Enough people are doing everything within their ability, of that I’m sure, despite the annulling of the municipality.

“You’re not growing into one of those fanatics like granddad, are you?” my Mum sometimes jokes. I’m afraid it’s too late, mim… I’m merely a Bilkert with writing aspirations who went to the Basque Country. Along the way I got handed some baggage, and was encouraged as if I were an ambassador who could present Bildts on an international stage. And that’s been supported more than I ever could’ve dreamed. We Bilkerts have allies. In Fryslân, in the Basque Country. Everywhere where people speak a minority language. Because we all fight the same fight.

I’d wish I’d looked across the border sooner. Because I’ve seen the same struggle there, and found enthusiastic allies. And I’ve returned to a Bildt that is hot as fire, for its own language and culture. In this year, the year in which het Bildt is annulled by a majority of our own council, that’s a blessing. The future of the Bildts language and culture does not depend on one of those fifteen council members. It’s in our own hands. The footsteps we leave behind in the snow can most certainly be lasting, as long as we keep on leaving them. In the end it’s just a matter of walking, walking, walking. Pressing those feet forcefully into the Bildts clay.

16 ~

‘How long do you give ‘t Bildts before it’s extinct?’ the reporter asked my granddad in 1984. His response: ‘I give ‘t Bildts as long as I live.’

My grandfather died in 2000. The Bildts language survived his prediction easily. If one were to ask me that question today, in full conviction I’d answer it the very same way. ~

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