Qualla: Zuidlaren

Zuidlaren: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Niels Elgaard Larsen, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the third Tuesday of October the streets of Zuidlaren fill with horses. Not a few horses for show - hundreds of horses, traded between dealers, farmers, and breeders who have come from across the Netherlands and beyond, in a market that has been happening on roughly this date for some eight hundred years. The Zuidlaardermarkt is considered one of the largest horse fairs in Western Europe, and despite the now-obligatory funfair attached to it, the core business of the day remains what it has always been: looking a horse in the mouth, walking it up and down the street, and shaking hands on a price. In 2010 Crown Prince Willem-Alexander - now King of the Netherlands - unveiled the bronze statue in the village center that commemorates the fair: a horse and two horsetraders, frozen mid-deal.

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Image: Niels Elgaard Larsen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Zuidlaren: On the Hondsrug

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Evert100, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of Drenthe is flat. The Hondsrug, where Zuidlaren sits, is the exception - a low, narrow ridge running roughly northwest to southeast from the city of Groningen down into the heart of the province. The name translates as 'dog's back' and the shape fits: a long, slightly sinu...

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Image: Evert100 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Zuidlaren: The Market Day

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A. J. van der Wal, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Zuidlaardermarkt has roots going back to the thirteenth century, when livestock fairs began rotating through the larger villages of the northern Netherlands on fixed feast days. Most of those medieval fairs eventually died. The Zuidlaardermarkt did not. It grew, mostly becaus...

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Image: A. J. van der Wal | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zuidlaren: Statues in the Square

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit toegeschreven aan Johan Joeke Gabriel van Wicheren (1808-1897), Public domain. Zuidlaren takes its sculpture seriously for a village its size. Beside the horse-and-traders statue stands a bronze of Berend Botje, the title character of a Dutch children's song so well known it is taught in kindergartens nationwide. The Berend Botje figure is actually based on...

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Image: toegeschreven aan Johan Joeke Gabriel van Wicheren (1808-1897) | Public domain

Zuidlaren: The Brinken and the Mill

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Drentse villages are famous for their brinken - village greens, usually small, mostly tree-shaded grass commons that historically served as gathering places, market sites, and overnight rest areas for livestock being driven to fairs like the one Zuidlaren still hosts. Zuidlaren h...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0