Qualla: Weerribben-Wieden National Park

Weerribben-Wieden National Park: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Deb Collins, CC BY 2.0. Nearly every lake you see here was dug by hand. For centuries Frisian peat cutters worked these wetlands, slicing wet turf into bricks, drying them in the wind, and selling them as winter fuel for the cities of Holland. The strips they left between cuts came to be called ribben — ribs — and the flooded trenches became the wieden, the wides. When the demand for peat finally collapsed after World War II, the cutters walked away and the water stayed. What looks today like pristine wilderness, the largest bog in northwestern Europe, is in fact a working industrial landscape that nature spent eighty years quietly repossessing.

Image: Deb Collins | CC BY 2.0

Weerribben-Wieden National Park: Ribs and Wides

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sito Wijngaarden, CC BY 2.0. The park covers roughly 100 square kilometers and stitches together two adjoining areas: De Weerribben, protected since 1882, and De Wieden, added in 2009. The names tell you exactly what happened here. Peat cutters left narrow strips of ground — the ribs — between the trenches t...

Image: Sito Wijngaarden | CC BY 2.0

Weerribben-Wieden National Park: Things That Live in Reeds

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The reed beds are the heart of the park's wildlife, and they are full of birds you have to learn to listen for rather than look at. The Eurasian Bittern hides in the reeds and broadcasts a low, foghorn boom that carries across the water. The Bluethroat flashes its sapphire patch ...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Weerribben-Wieden National Park: Travel by Punt

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Merrie, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cars are not allowed in most of the interesting parts of the park, which leaves four ways to move: on foot, by bicycle, by punt, or by canoe. The canoe is the most honest choice. Most of the canals are too narrow for anything larger, and from a low boat the reed walls rise on eit...

Image: Merrie | CC BY-SA 3.0

Weerribben-Wieden National Park: Giethoorn and the Working Mill

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CrazyPhunk, CC BY 3.0. Near the village of Kalenberg stands De Wicher, a working drainage mill that still occasionally turns its sails to lift water out of the polder, much as smaller windmills have done across these wetlands for centuries. To the south sits Giethoorn, the village threaded with canals ...

Image: CrazyPhunk | CC BY 3.0