Friday 1 July 2011

Borger



Axel kindly took us out a couple of times to see some of the hunebeds (stone burial chambers) which are numerous in the Drenthe region, and around some of the lovely neat villages, as well as for a walk in the woods. Apart from spending a couple of pleasant evenings which were topped-off beautifully with sitting around the firepit, swapping traditional alcoholic beverages, it also helped us to get our bearings.


One drizzly day we took a drive to the village of Borger where there is a very attractive and informative museum about the hunebeds. The tour started with a rather hypnotic and atmospheric film, without commentary, showing simply with images how the large stones (glacial erratics, I love that term) came to have arrived here from Finland after the ice age.


In the museum I especially enjoyed its large collection of reconstucted, decorated pots, and a series of dioramas demonstrating how the landscape would have changed with the advance of agriculture and the introduction of the canal and drainage systems. Although I was baffled when some text explained that settlements would have been built on higher ground. I haven't seen any yet, but the concept is more subtle here than we're used to.

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