The Rattle-Rat

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The Netherlands is known as a small country, but what foreigners usually don't know is that even this little speck on the map is divided into eleven provinces. Ten of these parts of a greater whole have been interdependent for centuries, but the eleventh province, Friesland, in the northwest, has liked to keep free of interference. It refused blind obedience to the government in The Hague to the south-and, as this tale will show, it is somewhat on its own today, still stubborn, separate, and in spirit proudly free.

Friesland has its own language, not a dialect, with grammar, verb conjugations, spellings, and sounds different from the Dutch language, which is spoken across its eastern frontier and south of the Great Dike that now connects Friesland with the province of North Holland and its capital, Amsterdam. Friesland's other frontier is the sea. The color of the sea reflects in Frisian eyes, the clear blue of valiant Vikings.

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