The Northern Netherlands

The oldest monuments in the Netherlands stand in Drenthe. Around 5,000 years ago farmers of the Funnelbeaker culture built the hunebedden, tombs of huge granite boulders carried from Scandinavia by ice-age glaciers; more than fifty survive, almost all of them in Drenthe. From around 500 BC people on the salt marshes along the coast raised their farms and villages on artificial mounds, called terpen in Friesland and wierden in Groningen, to stay above the tides.

The Frisians controlled the coast and North Sea trade in the early Middle Ages, and the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface was killed near Dokkum in 754. Medieval Friesland had no feudal lords, a state of affairs known as "Frisian freedom", until Saxon and then Habsburg rule arrived around 1500. The city of Groningen joined the Hanseatic League and dominated its surrounding countryside, the Ommelanden, and after joining the Dutch Revolt it gained a university in 1614. Drenthe, poor and sparsely peopled, was long the forgotten corner of the Republic, and its peat bogs were dug out from the 17th century onwards to create the peat colonies of the east.

In 1959 one of the largest natural gas fields in Europe was found at Slochteren in Groningen. Its gas paid for much of the Dutch welfare state, but extraction set off earthquakes that damaged many thousands of homes, and the field was shut down after years of protest. During the Second World War, Camp Westerbork in Drenthe was the transit camp from which most Dutch Jews were deported to the death camps.

Friesland has its own language, West Frisian, spoken at home by roughly half of the province and co-official with Dutch, and Frisians are proud of their separate identity, flag and history. Groningen and Drenthe speak dialects of Dutch Low Saxon, and northerners in general have a reputation for reserve and understatement.

Frisian sports are distinctive: fierljeppen, vaulting over canals on a long pole; kaatsen, a form of handball; and skûtsjesilen, summer races between old flat-bottomed cargo sailing ships on the Frisian lakes. The greatest northern tradition is the Elfstedentocht, a 200-kilometre skating race through the eleven historic Frisian cities, held only when the ice is thick enough — the last was in 1997, and it has become a symbol of vanishing winters. The Frisian horse, black and long-maned, and the black-and-white Frisian cow are both bred here.

The Oerol festival turns Terschelling into an open-air theatre each June, and the TT motorcycle race at Assen draws huge crowds. Leeuwarden, European Capital of Culture in 2018, is the birthplace of M.C. Escher and of Mata Hari, and Groningen, where students make up a large share of the population, is the north's cultural and nightlife centre.

About 1.75 million people live in the three provinces, spread thinly by Dutch standards. Groningen, with around 240,000 inhabitants, is the largest city; Leeuwarden has about 125,000 and Emmen about 110,000, while Assen is Drenthe's capital. Much of the region is villages, farms and small towns, and the island populations range from about a thousand on Schiermonnikoog to a few thousand on Terschelling and Ameland.

Dairy farming dominates Friesland; arable farming, potatoes and starch processing shape the Groningen clay and the peat colonies; and tourism supports the islands, the Frisian lakes and the Drenthe forests. Groningen's university and hospital are the largest employers in the north, and Eemshaven and Delfzijl host ports, data centres, energy plants and chemical industry.

The pace is slower than in the Randstad, with long cycle rides between villages and a strong sense of community. The aftermath of the gas earthquakes — compensation claims, house strengthening and distrust of the national government — is still the defining local issue in Groningen, alongside ageing villages, rural bus and shop closures, and the future of wind and hydrogen industries on the coast.

The north eats solidly. Friesland makes Frisian clove cheese (nagelkaas), a firm cheese spiced with cloves and cumin, and suikerbrood, a sweet bread packed with lumps of sugar and cinnamon, traditionally brought on a visit after a birth. Fryske dúmkes are small aniseed-and-hazelnut biscuits, and Beerenburg, a jenever flavoured with herbs, is Friesland's drink.

Groningen has Groninger koek, a spiced rye cake, and a coarse-grained local mustard, along with metworst, a dried sausage. Drenthe's farms and heaths supply lamb, potatoes, honey and game, and the peat colonies grow the potatoes that become starch and fries.

On the coast and islands the food turns to the sea: shrimps from the Wadden, mussels, smoked eel, and fried fish at the harbours of Harlingen and Lauwersoog. Terschelling is known for cranberries, said to have grown on the island since a barrel washed ashore in 1840, and sold to visitors and used by the island's restaurants and bakeries.

Groningen's centre is compact and car-light, from the Grote Markt and the Martinitoren to the Prinsenhof gardens and the colourful Groninger Museum on its island in the canal. Out in the province, the moated manor of the Menkemaborg at Uithuizen, the star-shaped fortress village of Bourtange, the seal centre at Lauwersoog and the wierden villages such as Ezinge show the countryside's past. Leeuwarden has the leaning Oldehove tower, the Fries Museum and the Princessehof ceramics museum, and Friesland's small historic towns — Harlingen, Hindeloopen, Sneek, Dokkum and Franeker with its 18th-century Eise Eisinga Planetarium — lie along the lakes and canals.

The Wadden Islands run from Vlieland, with its long dunes, through Terschelling and its Brandaris lighthouse and Ameland to Schiermonnikoog, a national park. The Wadden Sea itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with seals on the sandbanks and mudflat walks from the Groningen and Frisian coast, and the Lauwersmeer National Park is known for birdwatching and dark night skies.

Drenthe's hunebedden are scattered across the Hondsrug ridge, with the largest, D27, beside the Hunebedcentrum at Borger. The province also has the heaths and forests of the Dwingelderveld and Drents-Friese Wold national parks, the Drentsche Aa river valley, and the memorial centre at Camp Westerbork.