Frisia

Etymology

Subdivisions

• West Frisia in the Netherlands roughly corresponds to the province of Friesland. In a broader sense, it also includes West Friesland in northern North Holland and the Ommelanden in the province of Groningen, though the West Frisian language is only spoken in Friesland proper. Dialects with strong West Frisian substrates, including Low German and Low Franconian, are also spoken in West Frisia. In the province of Groningen, people speak Gronings, a Low Saxon dialect with a strong Frisian substrate. Rural Groningen originally belonged to the Frisian lands "east of the Lauwers" and is therefore more closely linked to East Frisia than to the west. In West Friesland, West Frisian Dutch – a Hollandic dialect with strong Frisian influences – is spoken.
• East Frisia in Lower Saxony, Germany roughly corresponds to the historical regions of East Frisia and Oldenburger Friesland, and the municipality of Saterland. In a broader sense, it also includes the Butjadingen peninsula and Land Wursten. Usually, only the people from East Frisia proper refer to themselves as East Frisians. The German name Ostfriesland distinguishes the historical region from Ost-Friesland, which refers to East Frisia as a whole.
• North Frisia in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany roughly corresponds to the district of Nordfriesland and the archipelago of Heligoland. It includes the North Frisian Islands, where varieties of the North Frisian language are spoken. It stretches from the Eider River in the south to the border of Denmark in the north. Until the Second Schleswig War in 1864, the region belonged to the Danish Duchy of Schleswig.

Section	Country	Subdivision	Flag	Population	Area
North Frisia	Germanyconvert|2047|km2|sqmi|abbr=on|sortable=on History Roman era The people, later to be known as Frisii, began settling in Frisia in the 6th century BC. According to Pliny the Elder, in Roman times, the Frisians lived on terps, man-made hills. According to other sources, the Frisians lived along a broader expanse of the North Sea coast. At this time, Frisia comprised the present-day provinces of Friesland, Groningen, North Holland and parts of South Holland. Early Middle Ages Frisian presence during the Early Middle Ages has been documented from North-Western Flanders up to the Weser River Estuary. According to archaeological evidence, these Frisians were not the Frisians of Roman times, but the descendants of Anglo-Saxon immigrants from the German Bight, arriving during the Great Migration. By the 8th century, ethnic Frisians also started to colonize the coastal areas North of the Eider River under Danish rule. The nascent Frisian languages were spoken all along the southern North Sea coast. Today, the whole region is sometimes referred to as Greater Frisia. Distant authors seem to have made little distinction between Frisians and Saxons. The Byzantine Procopius described three peoples living in Great Britain: Angles, Frisians and Britons, and the Danish author of Knútsdrápa celebrating the 11th-century Canute the Great used "Frisians" as a synonym of "English". The historian and sociologist George Homans has made a case for Frisian cultural domination in East Anglia since the 5th century, pointing to distinct land-holdings arrangements in carucates, partible inheritance patterns of common lands held in by kin, resistance to manorialism and other social institutions. Some East Anglian sources called the mainland inhabitants Warnii, rather than Frisians. During the 7th and 8th centuries, Frankish chronologies mention the northern Low Countries as the kingdom of the Frisians. According to Medieval legends, this kingdom comprised the coastal seelande provinces of the Netherlands, from the Scheldt River to the Weser River and further East. Archaeological research does not confirm this idea, as the petty kingdoms appear to have been rather small and short-lived. The earliest Frisian records name four social classes, the ethelings and frilings, who together made up the "Free Frisians" who might bring suit at court, and the laten or liten with the slaves, who were absorbed into the laten during the Early Middle Ages, as slavery was not so much formally abolished, as evaporated. The laten were tenants of lands they did not own and might be tied to it in the manner of serfs, but in later times might buy their freedom. The basic land-holding unit for assessment of taxes and military contributions was – according to Homans – the ploegg or teen, which, however, also passed under other local names. The teen was pledged to supply ten men for the heer, or army. Ploegg or teen formed a unit of which the members were collectively responsible for the performance of any of the men. The ploegg or East Frisian rott was a compact holding that originated with a single lineage or kinship, whose men in early times went to war under their chief, and devolved in medieval times into a union of neighbors rather than kith and kin. Several, often three, ploeggs were grouped into a burar, whose members controlled and adjudicated the uses of pasturage which the ploeggs held in common, and came to be in charge of roads, ditches and dikes. Twelve ploeggs made up a "long" hundred, responsible for supplying a hundred armed men, four of which made a go. Homans' ideas, which were largely based on studies now considered to be outdated, have not been followed up by Continental scholars. The 7th-century Frisian Realm under the kings Aldegisel and Redbad, had its centre of power in the city of Utrecht. Its ancient customary law was drawn up as the Lex Frisionum in the late eighth century. Its end came in 734 at the Battle of the Boarn, when the Frisians were defeated by the Franks, who then conquered the western part up to the Lauwers. Frankish troops conquered the area east of the Lauwers in 785, after Charlemagne defeated the Saxon leader Widukind. The Carolingians laid Frisia under the rule of grewan, a title that has been loosely related to count in its early sense of "governor" rather than "feudal overlord". During the 7th to 10th centuries, Frisian merchants and skippers played an important part in the international luxury trade, establishing commercial districts in distant cities as Sigtuna, Hedeby, Ribe, York, London, Duisburg, Cologne, Mainz, and Worms. The establishment of the Frisian trade network played a significant role in maintaining regional peace during the late Middle Ages. While interpersonal violence was on the rise almost everywhere else in Europe, Northern Europe and especially Frisia managed to maintain low levels of violence due in part to its well-developed society and established rule of law, which were results of extensive trade. The Frisian coastal areas were partly occupied by Danish Vikings in the 840s, until these were expelled between 885 and 920. Recently, it has been suggested that the Vikings did not conquer Frisia, but settled peacefully in certain districts, where they built simple forts and cooperated and traded with the native Frisians. One of their leaders was Rorik of Dorestad. Upstalsboom League During the 12th century Frisian noblemen and the city of Groningen founded the Upstalsboom League under the slogan of "Frisian freedom" to counter feudalizing tendencies. The league consisted of modern Friesland, Groningen, East Frisia, Harlingerland, Jever and Rüstringen. Neither the Frisian districts in West Friesland West of the Zuiderzee nor those north of the Eider River along the Danish North Sea coast participated. The former were occupied by the count of Holland in 1289, and the latter were governed by the Duke of Schleswig and the king of Denmark. The same holds true for the district of Land Wursten East of the Weser River. The Upstalsboom League was revived in the early 14th century, but it collapsed after 1337. By then, the non-Frisian city of Groningen took the lead of the independent coastal districts. 15th century The 15th century saw the demise of Frisian republicanism. In East Frisia, a leading nobleman from the Cirksena-family managed to defeat his competitors with the help of the Hanseatic League. In 1464 he acquired the title of count of East Frisia. The king of Denmark was successful in subduing the coastal districts North of the Eider River. The Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen remained independent until 1498. By then Friesland was conquered by Duke Albert of Saxony-Meissen. The city of Groningen, which had started to dominate the surrounding rural districts, surrendered to count Edzard of East Frisia in 1506. The city conveyed its remaining privileges to the Habsburg Empire in 1536. The district of Butjadingen was occupied by the Count of Oldenburg in 1514, the Land Wursten by the Prince-bishop of Bremen in 1525.