Aside: Terpen

Our rather rudimentary history lessons in grade school never failed to mention the “terpen”—the manmade elevations on which people lived in the nebulous reaches of early Dutch history.

I always envisioned them as little hillocks, painstakingly built like mudpies out of the watery bog, each crowned by a sorrowful little hut and occupied by bedraggled desert islanders, lost and lonesome, surrounded by scurvy chickens and disconsolate goats.

Better information suggests that the average “terp” was 4 or 5 meters high and large enough to accommodate an entire village. And the “terpen”-dwellers, comfortable and dry enough, had little to do but shore up the edges, leaving the rest to their livestock.

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