Late in the afternoon. December 28, 2018. One of the Frisian bastards arrives at the village of Anjum after a hike that started in the village of Holwerd. A walk of 30 kilometers along the coast. It was exactly 21 years ago that the villagers were shaken by the national news: the discovery of two bodies of men buried in the garden of guesthouse Het Station in Anjum. The killer was a woman; she was the owner of the guesthouse. Just to be on the safe side, the bastard had made reservations at a different lodging named Hotel Wad Oars. However, this hotel turned out to be flooded with women the whole night. In fact, the bastard encountered only one man during his one-night stay in Anjum. Where were the men? A report of One Night in Anjum.
But before we do some facts about Anjum's history.
Anjum, or Eanjum in the Mid Frisian language, is a terp village east of the village of Morra, in the very corner in the northeast of the province of Friesland. It has about 1,100 inhabitants. The terp (i.e., an artificial settlement mound; read our DIY manual Making a Terp in 12 Only Steps to learn more about these earthworks) on top of which Anjum is built, is more than 2,000 years old. The oldest written reference to the village dates from the tenth century, when it was called Annigheim or Annegum, meaning heem or hiem' 'homestead' of [a person named] Ania or Aninga (Idema 1977). A probably more correct explanation is Ane-inga's heem, meaning 'homestead of the folk of [a person named] Ane' (Van Berkel & Samplonius 2018).
In the Early Middle Ages, sheep farming was a main activity of the people of Annigheim (Prummel & Van Gent 2010). Besides wool, meat, and dairy, other economic activities we can assume the people were engaged in were sea trade and peat cutting for salt production, the latter in the nearby peat areas southwest of the village, an area known today as De Kolken. Lastly, Anjum used to be the stronghold of the Holdinga and Thoe Schwartzenberg families; the Holdingastate ‘Holdinga castle’ has been demolished, as nearly all of the hundreds of staten, also called borgen or stinzen 'small castles', in the north of the Netherlands have. The crypt of the Holdinga family, however, has been preserved and can be seen in the vaults below the twelfth-century Saint Michael church of Anjum.
The location of Anjum is on the outer rim of land, bordering both the Wadden Sea and the Lauwersmeer (Lake Lauwers). The Lauwersmeer used to be an inland sea, the Lauwerszee, until it was sealed off from the Wadden Sea by a big dyke in the year 1969. For a while, it looked like the Dutch central government would not dam the Lauwerszee, despite it being part of the Delta Plan of 1953. The government was trying to cut budgets. But after heavy protests in 1959, especially from the Frisians under the slogan “De Lauwerszee moet dicht!” (‘the Lauwers Sea must be sealed off’), and with signatures from 135,000 petitioners, the central government gave in and kept its promise. It was dammed.
At first, there were no plans what to do with the new sweet-water lake that was created by accident when the Lauwerszee was sealed off. Today, however, Lake Lauwersmeer is one of the national parks of the Netherlands. It is full of wildlife, especially all kinds of birds and plants. Including the white-tailed eagle. In fact, it turned out to be a glorious accident.
National Park Lauwersmeer is also listed by the International Dark-Sky Association. The mission of IDA is to preserve the night-time environments of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting. It is a great initiative, we think. According to a newly made legend, Lake Lauwersmeer is where the Milky Way galaxy begins, showing pilgrims the way to Santiago de Compostela. It is a glow of stars that begins at the Sea of the Frisians, leading you via Gaul, Aquitaine, Gascony, Basque Country, Navarre, and Spain to Galicia, where Saint James is buried. All this, according to the famous medieval ruler Charlemagne himself. Read also our blog post Legend of Esonstad.
So, when the bastard arrived late in the afternoon, when it was getting dark early anyway, this time of year, know that at Anjum and its surroundings it really, really gets dark. Wicked dark...
One Night in Anjum
It was around 17:00 hours when the bastard entered Hotel Wad Oars and was welcomed by a woman. The name Wad Oars is a wordplay on 'Wadden Sea,' which can be abbreviated in the Dutch language as Wad. Wad has the same pronunciation as wat in the Dutch language, which means 'what'. The word oars is Frisian and means 'other/different.' So, wad oars means 'something different' or 'what else.' The building of Hotel Wad Oars at Dorpsstraat St has always been a place for lodging. Originally, a century ago, it was called Het Logement (see image below). Later names and owners were Hotel Visser, Hotel Minneboo, Hotel Pestman, Hotel Vogel, and Hotel Lauwersmeer. Before the closing of the Lauwerszee in the year 1969, the ferry to the Wadden Sea island of Schiermonnikoog departed from the little harbor of the nearby hamlet of Oostmahorn. Staying one night in Anjum could be practical for travellers to and from the island of Schiermonnikoog.
Hotel Wad Oars also has a restaurant. Logically, the man asked to have dinner that evening. “That is possible,“ the woman taking care of the restaurant said, “but I would like to ask if you can eat early, because we play bingo this evening. That starts at seven,” the woman explained. “The whole restaurant will be crowded by then,” she added. An early meal was no problem for the man. The man was directed to his spacious room on the second floor. After a quick shower and change into less sweaty clothes, he sat at the table in the restaurant at 17:30 hours sharp, cutlery in his fists. He was the only guest in the restaurant, possibly the only guest in the hotel at all. The man published a post on Facebook that he had checked in at Anjum. Immediately he received a reply:
“Be careful there, with the killer women!”
It was pitch dark outside. Should he worry?
In the year 1996, a piece of mentally distressed driftwood ran aground at Anjum. Her name was Marianne. She had drifted along the southern North Sea coast for years. From, among others, the city of Amsterdam, the town of Den Helder, the Wadden Sea island of Texel, and a hamlet with the charming name Moddergat 'mud hole'. Until she finally washed up at the corner of northeast Friesland, at the village of Anjum. Carried to this backwater on the prevailing west to east current of the North Sea, as it were. A stranger she was.
Once in Anjum, Marianne started a guesthouse in the former train station at Skeanewei St, and she gave it the name Het Station. It was, as stated, the former train station of Anjum and the end of the line of a railway track to the provincial capital Leeuwarden. Het Station would be the final destination of Marianne for much of her remaining life, too, and especially of two men. The former railway track was known as It Dokkumer Lokaaltje, a local track that was dissolved in 1998. Already in 1935, train station Anjum had been closed down, by the way, because the final stretch of the track was unprofitable. Who wanted to go to Anjum?
On Christmas 1997, the remains of two adult men were discovered in the garden of guesthouse Het Station. Marianne was arrested and convicted by the court a year later. She was sentenced to six years in jail with additional detention under hospital orders (i.e., TBS as the compulsory treatment is known in the Netherlands), because of diminished capacity. In 2014, she was released. To this day, Marianne says she is not guilty. Some people doubt whether she was the chief perpetrator and say she was merely an accomplice (Crombag & Israëls 2008, Brandsma 2022). It is nonetheless a horrible and tragic story.
Het Hounegât – In the vaults below the tower of the Saint Michael church is Het Hounegât. Translated it means something like ‘hound pit’. It is a small room that according to tradition initially was used as a place where dogs were put when people visited the church on Sundays, or any other day. Later, around the year 1700, it was turned into a primitive prison cell with a heavy door. Here tramps, thieves, vagabonds, drunks, robbers, and other criminals were held up (Idema 1977). It is still there to see. And no, it is not being used anymore, not even then in 1997.
Back to the restaurant of Hotel Wad Oars.
Around 19:00 hours, the bastard had finished his hasty dinner together with a few wines, when the room started to fill up with people to play bingo. They were all women. Women of every age between 18 and 70 years. The bastard estimated it was about fifty women. One of the women came to his table and said with a big laugh: “We are the killer women. Saw your post on Facebook!” Then she explained briefly that the whole murder thing back in 1997 actually meant they finally had some distraction and fun in the village. “Nothing ever happens here in remote Anjum,” she explained. “We enjoyed seeing our friends and neighbours on the national telly speaking terrible Dutch because, in fact, we only speak Frisian properly. Hilarious!” she shouted.
It crossed the bastard's mind that if Marianne was not guilty after all, the murderer or murderess could just as well be playing bingo tonight, too?
It was a crowded house, and time for the bastard to move to a corner of the room near the bar, so the women could play their bingo at the tables. Somehow, you do not want to irritate the women of Anjum, especially when you are heavily outnumbered. Everyone was dead serious once the game started. Silence took over, like being in church. The only sound was that of the numbers being announced and the occasional "BINGO!" With a soft voice, the bastard ordered a whisky and asked the waitress behind the bar — who, just like the bastard, turned out to be from the port of Harlingen and thus spoke no Frisian — if this evening was women only. “No,” she answered, “men just don’t come here these bingo nights.” "Oll righty then. Where on earth did I end up?" the bastard thought.
At the bar, there was the only other male person besides the bastard. After a while, the bastard and he made a little chat. Like the woman behind the bar, the man did not speak Frisian either. He too was a stranger and came from the town of Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands. That could explain why he was the only male in the room. He worked at the big, old windmill called De Eendragt ('the Concord') in Anjum, in the little museum annex tourist office. “And I help villagers out when they need to correspond in Dutch writing with government officials,” he said. "The Dutch language seems to be a real issue in Anjum," the bastard said to himself.
The so-called miller saw the book the bastard was reading: De traanjagers 'the train-oil hunters' by writer Anne-Goaitske Breteler. The book is about the many young men of northeast Friesland who became whalers after the Second World War. Breteler had documented several of their personal stories, a history that became taboo once whale hunting was condemned. He said, while pointing at the book: "I know her father, Anne-Goaitske's father! Both are from this region," and he told some stories of what they had experienced together. "What a coincidence this is," the bastard thought, and he enjoyed the evening and the whisky. Although, he still felt a bit on his guard being surrounded by so many potentially killer women.
Around 22:00 hours, bingo was over. All the prizes had been distributed. Then the women started to have a few more drinks. By midnight, everyone went home. The bastard felt safe and went to bed as well. Two hours later, he was woken up by enormous blasts. He heard a dog barking inside the hotel. Strange, because he thought he was all alone in the hotel. Soon, the bastard realized what the noise was. It was guys busy ‘carbidschieten’, i.e. firing calcium carbide, probably with big iron milk churns. It was too dark to see anything outside – International Dark-Sky Association, remember. Carbidschieten is a familiar tradition in the countryside, especially in the north and east of the Netherlands around New Year's Eve. The Frisian bastard fell asleep again.
Quite early in the morning, the bastard had breakfast. Today, he would continue walking to the old fishing port of Zoutkamp in the province of Groningen, about 20 kilometers. At the mouth of the River Lauwers. It would rain, promised the weather forecast. Often the weather forecast is wrong, but not that time.
A different woman than yesterday was serving breakfast. It was great food. She asked the bastard where he lived. “The Hague,” the bastard explained. She responded with: “Aren’t there a lot of, euh, non-Dutch people living there?” The bastard was afraid this conservation could turn awkward. "Yes, indeed. About fifty percent in the city is of foreign origin," the bastard replied. Then she continued: “In our village we have a foreign family, too. Somali. Refugees. I drive them each Friday to the town of Groningen, because here in our village we have no mosque. But sometimes I cannot help thinking that the distance to the Dutch culture is just too big for them. I also once tried to answer those questions of their integration exams. I really found them difficult to answer. And believe me, I’m not really stupid because I did the HAVO (i.e. higher high school) when I was a girl.” The woman and the bastard came to talk about 'the world and all that’ when she also told her son was in military and currently stationed in Iraq.
The bastard could not help to see the existing disconnect between the city, the urban world, and that of the countryside. In the city, people decide and talk about war, but it are the sons of the villagers who actually fight their global wars. Also, people from villages reason from the concept of community sense. With mutual ties, shared values and traditions. Out of this concept they wonder what that means for not only absorbing persons from distant cultures, but also what it implies for the ‘strangers’ who settle within such a foster community. Words like 'global community' or 'world citizen' are too abstract and fictional to them. A theoretical, sophisticated concept. Her elementary way of thinking was right in a way. The global challenges of world politics do not pass by the villagers. There is no ignorance there. Instead, the countryside is actively part of those challenges. But from and with a different angle and perspective.
The bastard was happy to be out of the city bubble for a while. A reset button.
Then, when the bastard almost had finished his breakfast, it turned out there were two more guests. He was not the only guest, after all. It was an elderly couple, and they had a little dog with them. "Must have been the dog barking that night," the bastard guessed.
When the couple was seated at a table near the window and the woman asked for their choices for breakfast, the couple started to complain about the noise on the street that night. Their accent was that of the city. They said the dog was in distress, and they really had considered calling the police. The woman, in a tone as if she were having a regular conversation about the weather with her demented mother, commented that it had been very wise indeed of them not to call the police. “The boys only would have liked it. You would have given them exactly what they want. It is a local tradition here during the short days,” she said. No sorry, nothing. “So, it was fresh orange juice and fresh mint tea with ginger slices you wanted?” and off she was. The couple had difficulties finding the reset button. They started to pat the little dog. Frantically. It gave the dog even more stress than the blasts of last night.
The bastard paid his debts and left the hotel. To drift further along the coast. There where Marianne's journey had ended, he continued his path. Following the prevailing sea current toward the east. On his way out the village, he walked via the old church on the solid terp, and via the old windmill De Eendragt. Both the church and the windmill were closed this early in the morning.
Just before he walked out of the village, at the crossing with Skeanewei St where guesthouse Het Station once was located, there walked a woman. It had started to drizzle in the meantime, and everything had turned calm, gray, and hazy. Again the bastard wondered: "Where in heaven's name are the men of Anjum?" The woman was together with her little daughter and pushing a baby carriage. She halted at the crossing at a great distance to let the bastard, a stranger, pass by. No traffic, no noise. No greeting either. Somehow it was clear that that would have been inappropriate. Except for the soft drizzling rain, there was a deathly silence.
In the wheat field just outside Anjum, the bastard spotted a lone deer in the distance. Not a typical brown one this time; it was black. Or was it a demon goat, and did he make it out of Anjum just in time? Quietly and humble he walked on.
"♪ I can feel the devil walking next to me ♪"
Note 1 – Briefly the book De Traanjagers of writer Breteler about the whaling after the Second World War was mentioned in this blog post. Frisians have had a long and much too prominent tradition in hunting the whale. Read our blog post Happy Hunting Grounds in the Arctic.
Note 2 – In the meantime the Hotel Wad Oars has yet again a different owner and name, and is now (2023) known as Hotel Toxopeus.
Note 3 – If interested in photos of this two-days hike, check here.
Suggested hiking
There are eleven – the number of fools – hikes in the Netherlands in the area around mental institutions. Often these institutes were located in remote, hence, beautiful natural areas. These can be found in the book with the title Te gek om lost te lopen ('too crazy to walk around freely'), written by Ruud van der Loo and Rutger Burgers (2000).
Suggested music
It Dockumer Lokaeltsje, Mummies (1990)
Murray Head, One Night in Bangkok (1984)
Further reading
Berkel, van G. & Samplonius, K., Nederlandse plaatsnamen verklaard. Reeks Nederlandse plaatsnamen deel 12 (2018)
Brandsma, M., De heks van Anjum. Dader of zondebok (2022)
Breuker, P., Het landschap van de Friese klei 800-1800 (2017)
Crombag, H. & Israëls, H., Moord in Anjum. Te veel niet gestelde vragen (2008)
Idema, H., Van Anigheim tot Anjum (1977)
Koen, W., Pensionhoudster maakte Anjum in één klap beroemd (2017)
Koning, de P., Het ontspoorde leven van Marianne van der E. (1998)
Lasance, A., Wizo van Vlaanderen. Itinerarium Fresiae of Een rondreis door de Lage Landen (2012)
Loo, van der R. & Burgers, R., Te gek om lost te lopen (2000)
Mik, de K., Anjum schudt het hoofd na vondst ‘house of horror’ (1997)
Nicolay, J.A.W. (ed.), Terpbewoning in oostelijk Friesland. Twee opgravingen in het voormalige kweldergebied van Oostergo; Prummel, W. & Gent, van J.T., Dieren van de middeleeuwse terp Anjum-Terpsterweg (2010)
Nijdam, J.A., ‘De gemaskerde Wizo: vervalsing, mystificatie of pastiche?’. Bespreking van: Wizo van Vlaanderen, Itinerarium Fresiae (2012)
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