Qualla: Hattem

Hattem: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vysotsky, CC BY-SA 4.0. The castle was called the Dikke Tinne - the Fat Merlon - and that nickname tells you almost everything about how the town of Hattem saw itself in 1404. A merlon is the solid stone block between the gaps on a battlement, the part you hide behind when arrows are flying. Hattem's merlons were the fattest in the Low Countries. The walls of Castle Saint Lucia were the thickest in the Netherlands at the time, which is to say someone went to the trouble of measuring all the castles in the Low Countries and Hattem won. The castle is gone now - knocked down in 1778 so the townspeople could reuse its bricks for their houses - but the name survives in a festival the town still throws every two years.

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Image: Vysotsky | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hattem: Heem of the Hattuarii

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit arch, Public domain. The town's own name carries an old argument about where the people came from. One reading traces it to a heem - a home - of the Chattuarii, a Germanic tribe also written Hattuarii or Hatten. Another simply pulls it from a person, a leader called Hatto. Either way, the place is na...

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Image: arch | Public domain

Hattem: A Minor Hanseatic Voice

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Flo Beck, Public domain. Shortly after 1294, Hattem joined the Hanseatic League - one of only nine Dutch cities in that vast Northern European trading confederation. Honesty compels the admission that Hattem played, in the official history's words, a very minor role. The big Hanseatic voices were Lubeck ...

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Image: Flo Beck | Public domain

Hattem: Patriots and a Governor-General

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DeVrolijkeSchrijver, CC0. Two stories from Hattem's later history are worth carrying with you. The first: in 1786, Hattem and nearby Elburg became flashpoints of the Patriottentijd - the Dutch Patriot movement that sought to break the power of the stadtholderate and bring something like republican democra...

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Image: DeVrolijkeSchrijver | CC0

Hattem: What to Walk Today

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michielverbeek, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hattem's medieval street plan still runs around the Grote of Andreaskerk and its 13th-century tower. The Dijkpoort, one of the surviving town gates, stands in unmistakable Hanseatic brick, capped with the kind of small pointed turrets that turn a working defensive structure into ...

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Image: Michielverbeek | CC BY-SA 3.0