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Canal ice helps Dutch rediscover national identity
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by amyjudd | January 17, 2009 at 07:54 pm
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It has been 12 years since the Netherland's canals froze on their own, but this year it has been cold enough, so thousands of skaters defied the freezing temperatures and hit the ice; and as a result the hospital ward were filled with people with broken limbs and sprained ankles.
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Even the train drivers were told to go slow to be careful of the skaters as they made it from one frozen canal to another.
In the 19th century, when Hans Brinker, the hero of the novel in which he tries to win a pair of silver skates, coasted along Holland's ice, the canals froze almost every year. But water pollution and climate change have made this so rare that today a boy of 15, Brinker's age, may never have seen a frozen canal, or at least remember one. Until, that is, this year.
"For us, it's in our genes," said Gus Gustafsson, 68, a retired insurance executive, explaining why he and his wife had rushed out to buy new skates and take to the ice under a cloudless blue sky. "It was like a frenzy that came over people, including lots of kids, like my granddaughter, who is 5." With thousands of others, they skated northeast toward the cheese capital, Gouda, then toward Utrecht.
There is something very Dutch about skating, and almost all the stores were sold out of every pair of skates they had.
However the cold snap is expected to end soon, bringing rain and clouds again.
This year however, was the 100th anniversary of the first race across the frozen canals through 11 cities in the north, so it did create some nostalgia for those days.
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