Klompen!

I thought that I would interrupt the Denmark series with a quick side note on klompen--aka wooden clogs!

I was talking to one my Dutch colleagues and she said that that particular stereotype is based on reality.  She said that until 15 years ago or so, city workers putting in streets still wore wooden clogs because they were so much better at protecting toes from shovels and things than boots available at the time.  People only stopped wearing them because they were forbidden from wearing them by statute when the state determined that boots had become safer.

(I didn't take this picture but it was specifically allowed to be used on the internet.)

If you go to the market and to tourist places, you can get fancy, brightly painted clogs.  I had assumed that these were solely for tourists.  Apparently, however, real Dutch people did wear fancy painted clogs, it was just that they were for Sunday wear.  They wore plain, unpainted clogs for everyday.

I was looking up more information about clogs--I figured that if farmers and other folks still wore clogs, they probably did not buy them from tourist shops so I wanted to see what "real" Dutch klompen were like.  I found a website that sells them.  The Klompenmakerij Traas (the Traas Clog Manufacturers) have been around for over a hundred years.  If you click here, you can go to their English language website where you can find a little information about their history and about how they make clogs.  You can also buy clogs from them, if you want.  The traditional clogs that they sell cost less than half of what the touristy ones cost in the store.

As an interesting side note, when you go to the website, you can choose to view it in English, Dutch, or Zeeuws.  Zeeuws is the traditional dialect of the Zeeland region of the Netherlands.

Since my only potential genealogical connection to the Netherlands is through a immigration officer's misspelling of Zeelander to Selander, this means that I feel an especial connection to that clog company and to that language.  So I tried to read it in Zeeuws.  I could not, which was sad.

On the map on the right, the blue bit of the map is the area where Zeeuws is spoken.


One thing which has diminished my own personal interest in trying Dutch clogs is that the Dutch have a specific word for the top of the foot.  My Dutch colleague and I were talking about whether clogs were comfortable or not.  She said that they really weren't at first--they caused a lot of pain on the . . .  And then she stopped and said she didn't know what the English word was which meant the top of the foot.  Clogs really rub on the bovenkant and are painful until a callus forms.  I am not entirely certain I really want to go through the pain of forming a giant callus along the top of my foot.  I am also concerned that the pain would be significant enough to encourage a whole nation to make up a whole, special word for what is being hurt.  It seems suspect.