Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
According to Pliny the Younger, in Roman times, the Frisians (or, as it may be, their close neighbours, the Chauci) lived on terps, man-made hills. According to other sources, the Frisians lived along a broader expanse of the North Sea (or "Frisian Sea") coast. Frisia at this time comprised the present-day provinces of Friesland and North Holland.
The earliest Frisian records name four social classes, the ethelings (nobiles in Latin documents) and frilings, who together made up the "Free Frisians" who might bring suit at court, and the laten or liten with the slaves, who were absorbed into the laten during the Early Middle Ages, as slavery was not so much formally abolished, as evaporated.
Though it is impossible to know exact numbers and migration patterns, research has indicated that many Frisians were part of the wave of ethnic groups to colonise areas of present-day England alongside the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, [24] starting from around the fifth century when Frisians arrived along the coastline of Kent. [25] [26]
The earliest Frisian records name four social classes, the ethelings (nobiles in Latin documents) and frilings, who together made up the "Free Frisians" who might bring suit at court, and the laten or liten with the slaves, who were absorbed into the laten during the Early Middle Ages, as slavery was not so much formally abolished, as evaporated.
The early medieval Frisians were in fact, like Hengist and Horsa, immigrants from Anglo-Saxon descent, absorbing the older name of the Frisii that inhabitated the area in Roman times. Under Radbod of Frisia the Frisian kingship reached its maximum geographical extent, covering the coastal districts of North and South Holland ( Frisia ulterior ...
The interpretation of these references to 'Frisians' as references to the ancient Frisii has occasionally been made. The Byzantine scholar Procopius , writing c. 565 in his Gothic Wars (Bk IV, Ch 20), said that "Brittia" in his time (a different word from his more usual "Bretannia") was occupied by three peoples: Angles, Frisians ...
The Viking rule in Frisia was terminated, nevertheless in view of the continuous threat, the local peasants were granted the Frisian freedom (West Frisian: Fryske frijheid), which excluded them from the feudal customs in the Frankish Empire, with no suzerain above them than the Emperor himself.
[1] [2] (Because the early Frisians and Anglo-Saxons were formed from largely identical tribal confederacies, their respective languages were very similar. Old Frisian is the most closely related language to Old English [ 3 ] and the modern Frisian dialects are in turn the closest related languages to contemporary English.)