Qualla: Gorredijk

Gorredijk: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taks, Public domain. The writer Jacob van Lennep, on a long walking tour of the Netherlands in 1823, paused near Heerenveen to record an impression of a neighbouring town. 'A little further west', he wrote, 'is the Gordijcke, where there still live some half savages or cavemen, whose houses are half underground and who live from robbery and begging. Of the three criminals who are sentenced in Friesland, one is from that place.' The Gordijcke he meant is the modern Gorredijk, today a quiet Frisian town of about 7,360 people in the municipality of Opsterland. The road in is now an ordinary Dutch B-road. The half-buried houses are gone. The reputation took most of two centuries to outgrow.

Read more: Gorredijk on Qualla

Image: Taks | Public domain

Gorredijk: A Canal Was the Town

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michielverbeek, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gorredijk is a vlecke, a particular Dutch settlement type that means roughly trading post village, formed not around a church or a market square but around a canal. The canal in question was the Opsterlandse Compagnonsvaart, and it was the only reason anyone built here. In 1622 t...

Read more: Gorredijk on Qualla

Image: Michielverbeek | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gorredijk: Peat, Poverty, Distilleries

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agnes Monkelbaan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Vast peat bogs once covered this part of southeast Friesland. Excavating them was filthy, freezing, dangerous, badly paid work that nonetheless drew thousands of people to a region that had been almost empty. The peat was floated out through Gorredijk on barges and traded onward....

Read more: Gorredijk on Qualla

Image: Agnes Monkelbaan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Gorredijk: A Red Town With Many Churches

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bouwe Brouwer, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gorredijk has long had a reputation as a 'red' town, meaning socialist, and one of the founders of Dutch socialism, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, came from the area. Yet for a town that prides itself on its workers' politics, it has built remarkably many churches: a Catholic chur...

Read more: Gorredijk on Qualla

Image: Bouwe Brouwer | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gorredijk: Liberation by Drawbridge

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Theun, CC BY-SA 3.0. The war was relatively quiet here. Friesland's flat empty interior was full of hiding places, and many residents quietly worked with the resistance. On the eve of the country's liberation in April 1945, there was a firefight near the drawbridge on the main street. A young resista...

Read more: Gorredijk on Qualla

Image: Theun | CC BY-SA 3.0