Qualla: Upstalsboom

Upstalsboom: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthias Süßen, CC BY 3.0. Every year on the Tuesday after Pentecost, one redjeven from each of the Seven Sealands made the trip to a low rise of dry ground just outside Aurich. The site was called the Upstalsboom - the tree of Upstal - though no one remembers what Upstal originally meant. Possibly elevated. Possibly dry. They were there to argue: about currencies, about murder fines, about exchange rates, about which mendicant orders could collect alms in which sealand, about whether the Hanseatic League could be resisted or had to be appeased. The Frisians did not have a king. They had this annual meeting under a tree, and a set of statutes ratified there in 1323 that called itself the legal framework for an entire culture. The German historian Ubbo Emmius later called the Upstalsboom the altar of freedom. Some visitors still take small bottles of dirt away from the site.

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Image: Matthias Süßen | CC BY 3.0

Upstalsboom: An Assembly Without a Capital

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthias Süßen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Upstalsboom is the only known meeting place where representatives of all Seven Sealands of medieval Frisia actually convened. Other assemblies existed within individual sealands, but the Upstalsboom drew together emissaries from across the Frisian-speaking coast - the lands b...

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Image: Matthias Süßen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Upstalsboom: Statutes Carved into Latin and Old Frisian

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pixelfehler 16:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC), Public domain. On 18 September 1323, the Statutes of Upstalsboom were ratified in Central Frisia in an attempt to revive a league whose legal force was slipping as the Count of Holland pressed his claims into Frisian territory. Three versions of the Statutes survive. Two are in Old Frisian, one...

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Image: Pixelfehler 16:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC) | Public domain

Upstalsboom: Burial Mound, Meeting Place

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Lebeau, Public domain. The hill at Upstal was sacred ground long before it became an assembly site. Archaeological evidence shows that members of important Frisian families were buried here as early as the eighth century, hundreds of years before the league is first attested in writing around 1220. By ...

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Image: Chris Lebeau | Public domain

Upstalsboom: Free, Until They Weren't

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Archives nationales (France), CC0. The Frisian freedom period was marked by extraordinarily successful repulsion of foreign invasion. Other than two notable defeats - in 1270 against the Count of Stotel, and in 1289 against the Count of Holland - the sealands consistently beat back the armies that came to subjugat...

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Image: Archives nationales (France) | CC0

Upstalsboom: The Pyramid and the Pilgrim's Dirt

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. In 1883, German nationalism in its romantic-historical mode reached the Upstalsboom. A stone pyramid was erected at the site to memorialize the Frisian freedom period - a modest monument by the standards of the era's commemorative architecture, but a deliberate gesture. The pyram...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain