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3.1 HISTORY of the RECLK.Zi'ion of the WESTERN FENLANDS

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3.1 HISTORY of the RECLK.Zi'ion of the WESTERN FENLANDS 3 HISTORY OF THE RECLK.Zi'ION OF THE WESTERN FENLANDS AND OF THE ORGANIZATIONS TO KEEP THEM DRAINED H. van der Linden Faculty of Law Free University Ams terd am The Netherlands 3.1 The earliest,occupation of the fenlands and its progress in the north of Holland Around the 8th century the midwest of the Netherlands consisted of far larger areas of peat fenland than it does now. In the centre of this area the small, freshwater lake Almere was situated. The Almere was fed by the rivers Gelderse IJssel and Utrechtse Vecht. It had only a narrow passage between Friesland and Northern Holland to the North Sea. In :hose early times the whole area between the Frisian Islands to the north and the Zeeland islands to the south, consisted or large cushions of peat, extending inland from the dunes and geest on the coastal areas. The peat areas, or fenlands as they are commonly known, were inter- spersed between many rivers. The land along the river banks consisted of clay and layers of clay on peat, and the land furthest from the in; fluence of the rivers was pure peat. There is evidence that the sandy geestland (fossil coastal barriers behind the dunes, cf. Figure 7 in Bijlsma's paper) along the whole of the coastline was already settled in the eight century AD), together with some places scattered along the larger rivers. Although there is evidence of some sparse habitation in the northern part of the fenlands in the mid-west at this time, these vast wastes remained largely in their wild, uninhabited state. That there was some habitation in the northern part of this area is obvious when one looks at data about place names of the area. The suffix more (an old Dutch word for peat)was in evicience: 42 Tijslemore, Langenmore, etc., are to be found in the ecclesiastical records of properties of those days. I There are no sources of information of mans' progress in the fenlands during the ninth century or the first half of the tenth century. We can I only guess that the lack of finds relating to this period is due to the Dane raids in the area, or to a higher number of storm surges, which would have discouraged new colonization, the people preferring to remain I in the safer regions of the dunes. We do know that in the second half of the tenth century the first vigor- ous efforts were made to occupy the wild fenlands in the area now known as the province of North Holland . The chronicles of properties and reports of place names indicate the gradual colonization of the fens to the east. Most of the area must have been occupied by the year 1100 AD. Data of a later date concerning the payment of bodding by most of the settlements in the area, corroborates this. Because we know that bodding (a kind of tax paid by settlements to the count) was no longer I required of those settlements which had been established after the be- ginning of the 11th century, it is clear that those settlements which paid bodding must have been founded before this time. We can also make deductions about the system of reclamation used there in those times. The map still shows the lines of the ditches used for the drainage of settlements. The unequal length of these ditches as well as the irregular courses of waterways and canals, indicate that the work was carried out under conditions of "free enterprise", by which I mean that there was no control from a higher authority. It is possible that the reclamation was organized by the old settlements and probably, in part, by the Abbey of Egmond, which in that period was the only Abbey in this region. Further testimony about the system of reclamation at that time can be found in an Icelandic legend dating back to the tenth century. This gives reports of a Norman raid on the Frisian coast, in which the in- * vaders were faced by flat lands, cut by numerous ditches. So both the map and the legend reveal that, in those early. times, the system of reclamation (which was later called the Dutch-Frisian system), was ap- plied on a large scale in this area. The method used was the digging of shared parallel ditches, or feather-patterned ditches, straight out from small streams or, in the later stages when it was necessary to open up 43 more of the wilderness, by the digging of canals into the hinterland. 3.2 The Holland-Utrecht lowland plain: the beginnings of its systematic reclamation 3.2.1 Pre-1955 viewpoint Until quite recently the vast Holland-Utrecht plain (Figure I), which lies to the south of the area discussed above, was thought to have al- ways consisted of flat swamplands. This assumption was based on the work of the famous Dutch geographic historian, A.A. Beekman (1854-1947). Common opinion held that, because the plain consisted of swamplands, no regular reclamation could have taken place before about 1200 AD, which is the supposed time of the construction of continuous dykes along the lower reaches of the river Maas in the south, and the IJ in the north. It was thought that the area was under constant threat both to the south and the north from tidal rivers and sea branches. Only after dyking, (with sluices to rid the land of excess water at low tide), could the fens have been reclaimed and colonized. In the 1930's, however, the historian Heeringa began to question earlier theories about the reclamation of the Holland-Utrecht plain. In an essay on reclamation in the province of Utrecht he called attention to a few historical data from the eleventh and twelfth centuries which showed evidence that man must have inhabited several places in the centre of the fen area. Heeringa was the first to suggest that there must already have been agrarian settlements in what was previously thought to have been only swampy fenland. He was 'of the opinion that this land must have been drained by localized dykes surrounding it, and surplus water pumped off either by hand or with horse driven mills. However, he left open the question of dyking outside the actual cultivated areas which, in the 1930's, was generally held to have been necessary. 3.2.2 Post-1955 viewpoint My initial approach in the 1950's was that of a law historian, but my work soon led to the wider question of the earliest history of the reg- 44 ular habitation and reclamationof this enormous central region of the Netherlands consisting of peat, and peat on clay. Initially I was parti- , cularly involved in the Dutch part of the area, and I came across a good deal of data which did not match the common notions of the day. I found no less than three chapels mentioned in the central part of that fen area in about the first half of the eleventh century. I also found that several settlements there were still paying bodding in later times, a payment which, as already mentioned above, dates at the latest from the I beginning of the eleventh century. Although these historical facts were already known,scholars had, until then, justified them as having been concerned with sparse, isolated vestiges of fishermen and fowlers. I then came across an article written by the German historian, Rietschel, in 1906. Rietschel, who specialized in mediaeval German colonization, discussed the organization of agrarian colonies in the north-west of Germany. He described several contracts, dating from the twelfth century, by which the Archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg, as the ruler of the area, gave wild fenlands for reclamation. The oldest contract - a document dating from about 1113 - described the contract partners as HoZZandenses (Dutchmen). These agreements gave detailed stipulations about the organization of the communities to be created in the fenlands, and much data about the system of regular reclamation to be applied. In some cases Dutch techni- cal expressions were used. Rietschel had deduced from the contracts that these Dutchmen had brought with them, from home, their knowledge of reclamation of the fenlands, and also the whole framework for the conditions of settlement in such an enterprise. Rietschel challenged Dutchscblars to question, through research, his findings. But unfortunately no one made serious efforts to do so. That his challenge remained unfulfilled is hardly surprising, because the earliest comparable Dutch contracts on the reclamation of the fenlands which have come down to us, date from the thirteenth cen- tury. Furthermore serious attention being given to Rietschel's request was unlikely in view of the common belief, at the time, that the Dutch fen areas had always consisted of low-lying swampy marshlands. As I have already pointed out, reclamation of these marshes was then considered to have been impossible prior to the building of continuous dykes in the north and south of the plain in about 200 AD. 46 I made a careful study of those early German contracts and discovered a recurring stipulation in the seven oldest documents which dated from the twelfth century. It was stipulated that the Dutch colonists would pay a recognition, or census, td the Archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg as ruler of the area. This census was one denier (a small coin) per farm. The oldest of the contracts also stipulated the exact measurements of the farmlands, 720 by 30 rods', separated by shared ditches. I realized that here we had found the first exact description of the Frisian-Dutch sys- tem of 'parcelling' the fenlands.
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