Qualla: IJssel

IJssel: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gouwenaar, CC0. For centuries the story went like this: around 12 BCE, Roman legionaries under the general Nero Claudius Drusus picked up shovels and dug a connection between the Rhine and a small local river called the Issel. The intent was military - a quick way to move troops north against Germanic tribes - but the consequence was hydrological, and the IJssel, as it would come to be called, became a Roman engineering project. Modern geology has complicated that legend. Radiocarbon evidence from Wageningen University suggests the IJssel only became a significant Rhine distributary around 600-950 AD, through a natural breakthrough - an avulsion - rather than a Roman canal. But the legend persists, because it is a good story, and because the Roman dug a canal somewhere in this delta, even if it wasn't quite this one.

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Image: Gouwenaar | CC0

IJssel: A River With Two Capital Letters

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GerardM, CC BY-SA 3.0. Even the name is strange. IJ is a digraph in Dutch orthography, treated as a single letter, which is why both characters get capitalised together - IJssel, not Ijssel, just as in IJmuiden and IJsselmeer. The river itself bears at least three layers of naming. The Romans called it...

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Image: GerardM | CC BY-SA 3.0

IJssel: How a Roman Canal Becomes a Lifeline

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. Drusus's canal turned a small headstream - the river now called the Oude IJssel, which still rises near Borken in Germany - into the upper reach of a much larger waterway. Once Rhine water was pouring north, the IJssel had enough discharge to become navigable. Average flow today ...

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

IJssel: The Slow Country

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Deb Collins, CC BY 2.0. Watch the IJssel from a dyke for half an hour and you understand why the Dutch landscape painters loved it. The current is slow enough to be almost imperceptible. The banks are flat, the meadows behind them flatter, and the horizon is broken only by church spires and the occasion...

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Image: Deb Collins | CC BY 2.0

IJssel: Where the River Comes Apart

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tijmen Stam / IIVQ, CC BY-SA 3.0. In its last few kilometres, near Kampen, the IJssel splits into a small delta of distributaries - the Keteldiep, Kattendiep, Ganzendiep and Goot, with a fifth, the Noorddiep, now dammed at both ends. Once the river had many more mouths, but most have been silted up, dammed off or...

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Image: Tijmen Stam / IIVQ | CC BY-SA 3.0

IJssel: A River in War

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michielverbeek, CC BY-SA 4.0. In April 1945 the IJssel became, briefly, one of the last natural defences of the German occupation of the Netherlands. Allied troops liberating the eastern Netherlands had to force crossings under fire all along the river. The assault was successful - the IJssel was breached, th...

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Image: Michielverbeek | CC BY-SA 4.0

IJssel: The Province That Took Its Name

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wauteurz, CC BY-SA 4.0. On a map the IJssel separates the province of Gelderland from the province of Overijssel - literally Over-IJssel, the province across the river, as seen from the Bishop of Utrecht who once held the territory. The river named a province. It also gave its name to the IJsselmeer it ...

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Image: Wauteurz | CC BY-SA 4.0