TO AMSTERDAM IN SEARCH OF THE CITY’S SOUL
First there was the sea. Cold, grey, and northerly. It was not the Holy Spirit that hovered above water, but just the wind. It whipped the water into foam and sand into dunes. This is how Holland came to be.
Meanwhile, nobody bothered to trace the origins of the Hollanders. In that distant past, people had no business on these fleeting shores. Water was gradually encroaching on the western lands of the North Germanic lowland. This is why the Hollanders, wherever they hailed from, believed Holland’s landscape to be imperfect. You bet they did! After all, this so-to-speak landscape was ridden with peat swamps, clay and sand washed in by the sea, and moraines… And all of this “splendor” was below sea level. So they got about putting to order this piece of the continent forsaken by the gods at the moment of creation.
They seemed to have coped with the job. After centuries of drainage efforts, the country became armed with dams, levees, and channels, forcing the sea farther out. And the masterminds of these transformations became the Hollanders.
The national history of Holland is one of the population’s survival in the struggle against the elements. A series of natural calamities has left an indelible imprint on the national character of the Dutch. They know better than anybody else the meaning of life’s joys and their cost. Overcoming difficulties has become a form of entertainment and hobby for them. So if you ever spot a lone bicyclist crossing Sahara or a group of ice-skaters headed for the opposite bank of the frozen Baikal, they are most likely Hollanders.
The thorny path of creation of Amsterdam is reflected in its name. In the 12th century, fishermen built a dam and a floodgate on Amstel - a flooding-prone river that conjures up associations with the eponymous beer brand. The dam is one of the few structures capable of guaranteeing survival below sea level. The nation directed its resources toward building dams, not castles, and heroic boys who would block cracks in leaky dams with their fingers would be celebrated far more loudly than any monarch.
Somehow the Hollanders coped with the flooding - built the first major dam, Zedeyk, and so came the time to praise the Lord, that is, build the St. Nicolas Cathedral - the patron saint of fishermen, sailors, and everybody who cherishes the small joys of life.