Qualla: Broeksterwâld

Broeksterwâld: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Theun, CC BY-SA 3.0. For most of its history, this place did not have a name of its own. It was simply De Broek - the marsh - a wet, uncertain patch on the edge of the Dokkumer Wouden where settlers built turf huts among the reeds and reclaimed peat one road at a time. Records from 1452 call it Broe(c)k. By 1580 it had drifted to Broeick. The village now known as Broeksterwâld did not formally exist until 1964, when about eleven hundred people living south of Murmerwoude finally convinced the authorities that they were no longer a hamlet of somewhere else.

Read more: Broeksterwâld on Qualla

Image: Theun | CC BY-SA 3.0

Broeksterwâld: The Road Through the Mire

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ytzen, CC BY-SA 3.0. The earliest mention of this peatland - the 1452/3 reference to Broek - is not about people at all. It is about a road being built and maintained through the swamp, running from Broek toward the Swatte. That road was the first promise that the bog could be tamed, and it became, i...

Read more: Broeksterwâld on Qualla

Image: Ytzen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Broeksterwâld: Turf, Then Brick

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Theun, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the early twentieth century, something visible finally changed. The settlers' turf huts - low, dark, half-buried structures cut from the same peat the families worked - were replaced by small farms and houses built of stone. Brick is heavier than turf. It does not move with th...

Read more: Broeksterwâld on Qualla

Image: Theun | CC BY-SA 3.0

Broeksterwâld: A Village at Last

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Theun, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1964 the municipality of Dantumadiel finally acknowledged what the residents already knew: De Broek had become a village. They gave it an official name - Broeksterwoude - and put up a sign. Forty-five years later, in 2009, the sign came down and a new one went up: Broeksterwâl...

Read more: Broeksterwâld on Qualla

Image: Theun | CC BY-SA 3.0