Sluit menu
Sluit menu
’t is ’t zoetste tijd-verdrijf, een lustigh omme-reisje,
Met schaetsen op het ys te gieren gints en weer;
Maar even-wel ick houw dat liever ’t grage Meysje
Voor ’t struyck’len op de Zaen, yets anders deed veel meer.
Ice fun was for everyone in our country of origin. As soon as the frost began, men and women of all walks of life stood brotherly on the irons. In the course of the 17th century, with the rising awareness of the state in the Republic, skating became more and more an entertainment of the “ordinary” people, although they continued to experience the ice fun together. The higher positions often went on foot or seated in an artfully painted push or baking sledge or sleigh on the ice.
The popularity of skating can be seen from the large number of engravings with ice fun as a subject, which have been preserved from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The moralizing (folk) literature of the 16th and 17th centuries linked admonitions and incentives to act cautiously to incidents on the ice, in which expressions such as’ venturing on slippery ice ‘,’ not going on overnight ‘and’ well prepared come ‘to find their origin.
In addition to entertainment, skating also offered opportunities for lovers, and certainly the better positions could afford freedoms on the ice that were not tolerated elsewhere. For example, lovers could swing around hand-in-hand undisturbed and young men could help the girls put on their skates or catch them when they slipped. Firm amorous advances were sometimes made on the ice among the people.
‘t is ’t zoetste tijd-verdrijf, een lustigh omme-reisje,
Met schaetsen op het ys te gieren gints en weer;
Maar even-wel ick houw dat liever ’t grage Meysje
Voor ’t struyck’len op de Zaen, yets anders deed veel meer.’
It is the sweetest pastime, a delightful round trip,
With sketches on the ice to screech gints and again;
But I prefer to cut it that it is good girl
For tripping on the Zaen, something else did much more.
This is the caption to a print in a 17th-century songbook. When the roads became impassable in winter, the ice was also used to transport large and small loads, both with the horse sleigh and with smaller pushers.
In the 19th century, when the idea developed that movement was beneficial for body and mind, skating became entertainment into sport. Numerous local ice clubs arose, which organized regional competitions in hard riding and clean riding. In 1882, the Dutch Skating Riders Association (KNSB) was founded, so that people could compete nationally and internationally. In this century, the ice face therefore developed into a popular and widely practiced genre. Many landscape painters ventured to the ice face during both Romanticism and Impressionism. The vast rivers with windmills or other buildings were most suitable for capturing skating entertainment, but skaters were also included on the frozen canals of cityscapes and paintings with puddles and forest ponds.
