The Frisians ( ) are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwestern Europe on the coastal regions of northern Netherlands, north-western Germany and southwestern Denmark. They inhabit an area known as Frisia and are concentrated in the Dutch province of Friesland and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia (which was a part of Denmark until 1864).
The Frisian languages are spoken by more than 500,000 people; West Frisian is officially recognised in the Netherlands (in the Dutch province Friesland) while North Frisian and Saterland Frisian are recognised as regional languages in Germany.
Name The name of the Frisians is derived from the Roman-era name of the Frisii that inhabited a part of the same region until the 3rd century. Many proposals have been made about the etymology, most of which assumed that the early Frisii spoke a Germanic language, but this is today doubted, and no consensus exists about any of the proposals. Günter Neumann lists the following significant proposals:
"The free", "kinsmen", or "the beloved": Ramat and Krogmann connected the name with Gothic freis and Old High German frī ("free"), Gothic frijōn ("to love"), and the Indo-European root *prī- ("to love, be dear"). Their proposal did not explain the -s- in the ethnonym. Neumann developed this approach by proposing a nominal stem *priHes-, comparable to Sanskrit prayas- ("love, favour, joy"). Depending on the semantic development, he suggested possible meanings such as "those possessing freedom", "those belonging to the same stock", or "the beloved ones". He presented this as a possibility, rather than a proven etymology. "The daring" or "those exposed to danger": Johann Kaspar Zeuss, Jacob Grimm, Erdmann and Theodor Siebs connected the name with Gothic fraisan ("to try, test") and Old High German freisa ("danger"), interpreting it as "the daring" or "the brave"; Siebs more specifically proposed "those exposed to dangers at sea". Neumann regards this derivation as unconvincing. "The curly-haired": Jacob Grimm, Karl Müllenhoff, Rudolf Much, Jan de Vries and Helmut Birkhan connected the name with words such as Old Frisian frīsle or frēsle ("curl" or "tuft of hair"), interpreting it as "the curly-haired people". Neumann rejects this explanation because there is no independent evidence for such a characteristic Frisian hairstyle and because the relevant Romance words probably have a different origin. Producers or traders of woollen cloth: Kaspers connected the name with the same group of words but interpreted the underlying noun as a type of woollen fabric, suggesting that the Frisians were named after producing or selling it. This proposal depends on the same disputed word comparison and is likewise rejected by Neumann. A people of the frontier or outer edge: Several proposals interpreted the name geographically. Grienberger and Hellqvist connected it with Latin prīmus ("first, foremost") and reconstructed a place-name meaning "that which lies in front"; Ten Doornkaat-Koolman connected it with Frisian frese or frēse ("edge, border, strip"); and Törnqvist connected it, through metathesis, with Gothic and Old High German fera ("side, region"). Neumann regards all of these geographical explanations as linguistically untenable. A people named after cutting implements or earthworks: Loewenthal connected the name with Greek príōn ("saw") through a hypothetical Germanic word meaning "harpoon point". Krogmann later related it to Swiss German fries ("ditch-digger, dyke-builder, earthworker"), interpreting the Frisians as the ditch-diggers or dyke-builders of the marshes. Neumann notes that the necessary Germanic word for "harpoon point" is unattested and that the Swiss term may instead have referred secondarily to Frisian specialist workers. A pre-Germanic substrate name: Hans Kuhn interpreted the ethnonym within his hypothetical Nordwestblock theory as a pre-Germanic name that was later adapted to Germanic. He compared it with a wide range of Latin, Celtic, Balkan Indo-European and Greek names. Neumann strongly rejects this proposal because the comparisons are linguistically heterogeneous and Kuhn supplied no clear semantic explanation.
Languages
The language of the Roman-era Frisii is uncertain, but the early medieval Frisians the related culture of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain used a very similar language, together forming the Anglo-Frisian family of West Germanic. Old Frisian is the most closely related language to Old English The modern Frisian dialects are still the closest related languages to contemporary English that do not themselves derive from Old English, even though modern Frisian and English are not mutually intelligible, and modern Frisian has been strongly influenced by Dutch and other neighbouring languages.
The Frisian language group is divided into three languages: West Frisian, spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland Saterland Frisian, spoken in the German municipality of Saterland just south of East Frisia North Frisian, spoken in the German region of North Frisia (within the of Nordfriesland) on the west coast of Jutland.
Of these three languages both Saterland Frisian (2,000 speakers) and North Frisian (10,000 speakers) are endangered. West Frisian is spoken by around 350,000 native speakers in Friesland, and as many as 470,000 when including speakers in neighbouring Groningen province. West Frisian is not listed as threatened, although research published by Radboud University in 2016 has challenged that assumption.
History
Roman era Frisii
The name of the modern and medieval Frisians is derived from the Roman-era , who lived on the North Sea coast stretching from the Rhine delta to the delta of the River Ems, roughly including the modern Dutch provinces of North Holland, Friesland and Groningen. They first appear in Roman accounts in connection with Drusus's campaign of 12 BC, and later Roman authors describe them as living north of the Rhine frontier. They were not part of a Roman province, but they sometimes acted as Roman allies, opponents, taxpayers or soldiers. The Roman fort of Flevum was within Frisian territory.
The last clear Roman-era references to the Frisii belong to the late third and early fourth centuries. The Latin panegyric to Constantius Chlorus describes defeated Frisii and Chamavi who had moved into the Rhine delta being settled in other parts of the Empire, and Roman inscriptions continue to show Frisian military units in Britain in the third century. Seebold suggested that some Frisii may have joined the Franks, while others served as Roman soldiers or settled away from the old coastal homeland, while that those who remained in the homeland became part of a new culture related to that of the Anglo-Saxons who settled in Britain.
Disappearance of the Frisii name After the third century, written sources no longer mention the Frisii name, and regular early medieval use of the names Frisia and Frisian begins only in the seventh century, after a gap of more than 300 years. Archaeology suggests that this gap coincided with major population decline and cultural change in the coastal regions previously associated with the Frisii, followed by renewed growth from the fifth century onward. The name of the medieval Frisians is difficult to interpret, because it may reflect local survival, newcomers adopting the name of an older region or people, or outside reuse of a name known from classical geography.; ; .
Population decline appears to have begun in the third century and reached its lowest point in the fourth. In the northern terp region, including modern Friesland and Groningen, settlement declined after about AD 250 and the coastal area gradually depopulated from west to east, with only some settlements continuing into the early fourth century. In South Holland and North Holland the pattern also changed sharply, although some sites show continuity or later renewed occupation. The evidence supports major demographic and cultural disruption, but not the proven disappearance of every earlier inhabitant.
The new settlement phase in the fifth century is associated with cultural links to the north-western German coastal area, including pottery styles associated with areas to the east in what is now Germany (and sometimes referred to by archaeologists as an "Anglo-Saxon-style"). However, pottery fabrics do not by themselves prove migration or importation. At continuity sites, local potters may have adopted new decoration styles, while much of the wider repopulation of the terp region probably involved immigrants from the north-western German coastal area mixed with people from areas where occupation had continued.} Ezinge near Groningen is one of the main examples used to show that the northern coastal region did not follow a single pattern of total abandonment.; .
Reappearance of Frisians in early medieval sources The first post-Roman references to Frisians are uncertain. None of the sixth-century references to Frisians is without problems.
Procopius, writing in the mid-sixth century, names the Frisians as and lists them with the Angles and Britons among the peoples of the island of Brittia. He does not place them on the continent, and his northern geography is difficult to use as evidence for Frisia itself.
Around 580, Venantius Fortunatus names the Frisians as , with as a variant reading, in a poem for the Merovingian king Chilperic I: , "you are a terror to the farthest Frisians ... and Suebi".; This is a poetic list of peoples subject to Frankish power, and such lists could revive old ethnic names for literary effect.
Frisians appear in Beowulf and related heroic material. Finn is a Frisian ruler in the Finnsburg episode. Beowulf also describes Scandinavian invaders invading the Lower Rhine region, where Hygelac, King of the Geats was killed by Frankish forces. The Beowulf poet calls the raid a fight with Frisians (). Gregory of Tours apparently records the same raid, referring to a "Danish" king with the similar name Chlochilaichus, but he does not mention Frisians. For this reason, the Frisian material in Beowulf is usually treated as later literary evidence rather than as a direct record of the Migration period.
Coins with legends such as and may show use of the name around 600, but their interpretation and place of production are disputed.
The seventh-century Ravenna Cosmography gives clearer geographical evidence for the name, although it probably drew on older Roman geographical material. It refers to Frisians as and , and to their land as the . It places this land on the Ocean coast between the Franks on the Rhine, and Saxony, and says that the Rhine enters the Ocean below Dorestad in the . The author indicates that older sources examined described the country without naming it, but he found the name Frigonum in the work of a Gothic scholar named Marcomir, and that some people say it has no cities. However apart from Dorestad he names two which he found in old sources, Bordonchar and Nocdac.
Clearer and more regular use of the names and Frisians begins in the seventh century, especially in Frankish and missionary contexts.
7th/8th century Frisia In the seventh and eighth centuries, Frisia referred to a broad coastal zone around the southern North Sea, wider than the modern Frisian-speaking areas. This period was marked by maritime trade, cattle-breeding, local rulers, missionary activity, and conflict with the expanding Frankish kingdom. Frisian influence in North Sea trade led some contemporary non-Frisian documents to refer to the North Sea as the Frisian Sea (), and in Dorestad the term Frisian could mean a merchant, not necessarily an ethnic Frisian.