Frisii

The Frisii lived on the North Sea coast between the Rhine and the Ems, on salt marsh and artificial dwelling mounds called terpen raised above the tides, and their history is a long argument with two things: the sea and whoever was collecting the taxes. Rome brought them under tribute early, assessed in ox hides for the army. In AD 28 a Roman officer raised the standard of the required hide to that of the aurochs, which the Frisian cattle could not meet, and took land, wives and children in payment; the Frisii hanged the tax collectors, destroyed a Roman force at the Baduhenna wood, and were not seriously reconquered. Tacitus notes the episode with evident disapproval of Rome. They stayed outside the empire, traded with it heavily, and in the migration period expanded along the coast into what became Frisia proper, running the North Sea carrying trade so thoroughly that it was known as the Frisian Sea. The emporium at Dorestad was among the largest trading places in northern Europe. Independence ended with the Franks: Charles Martel and then Charlemagne conquered Frisia in stages through the eighth century, and the missionary Boniface was killed at Dokkum in 754 by Frisians who were still pagan. The language survives - West Frisian is the closest living relative of English - and the drowned and reclaimed coastline that shaped them is still being managed by the same means. Terpen are still visible as low mounds across the northern Netherlands. Frisian horses take their name from the region. The Frisian law code was written down under Charlemagne. Frisia has never been a state since.

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