How many mills are there in Holland. Dutch windmills - a symbol of the fight against the sea

On the way from Amsterdam to Bruges, we passed Rotterdam and stopped at Kinderdijk.

Almost half of the territory of the Netherlands (Holland) has been reclaimed from the water with the help of dams and windmills, driving pumps to pump out water and drain areas near the dams.

Around 1740, a system of 19 windmills was built in Kinderdijk to drain polders (drained and cultivated low-lying coastal areas). This group of mills is this moment largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands. Windmills in Kinderdijk are one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Netherlands.

The system didn't work very well. Periodically the land was flooded. By the way, in 1927, a diesel pumping station was built in place of the mills. And during the Second World War, the mills again served for the benefit of the Netherlands - there was not enough fuel for the station.

Please note that all mills have a turret in order to have maximum efficiency regardless of wind direction.

But all Kinderdijk mills are out of order. As you can see in the photo, there is no stretched material on the blades. Mills in working condition can be seen in Zaanstad.

Windmills of Zaanstad

As I already wrote, we tried to get to Zaanstad "but on bicycles, but by the will of fate we did not succeed, and we got to this tourist center by car. Zaanstad is notable for the fact that there is a museum under open sky Zaanse Schans, one of the best places in the Netherlands to see windmills in operation.

The industrial activity of the town is mainly due to the presence of wind and the mills of the 17th century were modern factories. In the old days, about 1000 (!!!) mills functioned here, but only 13 have survived to this day. Many mills are still operating! Mustard is crushed on one, cocoa beans on the other. Mill products can be bought directly in the building of the windmill.

All parts of the mill are made of wood. By the way, the windmills have a turning tower! It serves to deploy the blades at an optimal angle to the wind, and get maximum performance.

The town of Zaanse Schans is also famous for the fact that the Russian tsar, the innovator Peter I, studied shipbuilding there. The house in which the sovereign lived was wooden, at the moment dressed in a stone structure. Unfortunately, we didn't get to it. But Peter the Great lived in it for only a week. By the way, one of the reasons why Holland became a mighty maritime power is that one master came up with the idea of ​​using mills to make boards for the production of ships. Allegedly, this reduced the cost of building ships by 40 times !!!

Around the mills there are pastures where various living creatures graze. Pastoral paintings everywhere you look. Just keep clicking the shutter. By the way, Zaanstad, as it was, remains to this day an industrial center, in the background of photographs, not far from tourist place you can see modern factories.

All in all, this is another must-visit place in Holland. Theoretically, in the absence of strong winds and in good weather, one can get there by bicycle from Amsterdam.

Holland is a constant struggle with the elements - canals, ramparts, dams, piled houses. There are windmills on the canals. For most Russians, the mill is associated with something purely patriarchal - a village morning, the smell of fresh bread, geese grazing by the river, and so on. It is unlikely that at the mention of mills, epithets such as “industrial breakthrough” or, for example, “triumph of engineering” will arise in someone’s head – but in vain, since this is how the importance of mills for Holland should be characterized. Mills in the Netherlands are not for grinding flour. Here, the mills became a weapon that allowed the forces of land to win the first serious victory over the forces of water. But let's go in order... The very first windmills were called "goats". And the construction of wooden houses was the basis for the construction of the mill building. The entire body of the mill could easily rotate along its entire axis. The mechanisms of the structure were located on the windward side, this ensured the centering of the mill. From below, a rather large beam (drawbar) was attached to the wooden beams, with its help the windmill could turn. The rotation from the large main shaft was transmitted to the gears of the mill in such a way that for one revolution of the main shaft the millstone would make from seven to twelve revolutions.Then more modern windmills appeared, meaning: dutch windmills or tent type. During the operation of such windmills, the entire body will stand still, and only the upper part with a large main shaft will turn in the wind. In this way, several millstones were already set in motion and were much more productive. The drawbar was placed with reverse side windmill so that the windmill turns with the wind. The most active use of windmills was found in Holland, this is due to its natural and climatic conditions, since in this country there is a need to pump water from low-lying areas.Windmills areprototype, grandmothers of modern propeller wind generators (windmills), moreover, the first electric wind generator was built on the basis of a windmill. Every year on May 10, the Dutch celebrate windmill day, which along with tulips, canals and cheeseare calling card countries. On this day, about 600 of the 1000 windmills that have survived in the country are opened for tourists and local residents.

Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriel. Mill on the polder canal.1889

The word "mill" is associated with the smell of fresh bread, and rightly so - the traditional function of the mills was precisely the processing of grain. But mills as such did not appear immediately. The first devices for grinding grain were hand millstones in the form of two round stones with a hole in the middle. The upper circle moved relative to the lower one, and by adjusting the gap between them, it was possible to achieve different fineness of grinding. Needless to say, this method was inefficient and extremely laborious.

Haes, Carlos de dutch mill

Haes, Carlos de windmill dutch

The next step was the creation of hand mills. Here, the use of physical force was still required, but the upper millstone was set in motion whole system wheels or gears, which significantly increased the speed of rotation and productivity.Less compact, but more powerful were horse mills, where horse power was used instead of human power. And only after these steps did a person learn to use the energy of water and wind - water and windmills appeared.Windmills are much older than one might think at first glance. According to some reports, the first windmills appeared in Persia during the time of Caliph Omar, that is, six hundred years before the birth of Christ. And even earlier they appeared in China. In the 12th century, Europe built the first windmill to grind grain. And by the 14th century, Holland began to use wind energy to pump water from the fields, because most of Holland is below sea level and is often flooded. In part, this allowed Holland to be one of the richest countries at that time. In the drier regions of Europe, the wind brought water to the fields to irrigate the land.

When people in different countries The world think of Holland, then landscapes with tulips and windmills usually come to mind.

But rarely does anyone wonder why Holland has become a country of mills. Did they grind grains there more than in other countries? No. There were more mills in Holland for a different reason. Many Dutch mills never grind anything. They pumped water. For this they were invented and are an improved model of conventional mills.

About Dutch windmills and the Dutch mentality in the report of the Dutch correspondent of Radio Liberty from the archive of the site. You can also listen to the original of this program in our audio file in the upper left corner of this page in the recording from the site. We supplemented this review with excerpts from the official Dutch publication on Dutch windmills, providing it with notes.

• audio file #1

Symbol

fighting the sea

Dutch polder mill and tulips - Dutch classical landscape.

“There used to be a sea here. The area is still called so - Shermeyr, "inland sea." At the beginning of the 17th century, in just one year, the mill builder and inventor Jan Andrianzoon, nicknamed “Leyhvater” (“empty water”), drained the sea, turning it into what is called in Dutch the word “polder” (“polder” ) is a fertile piece of land below sea level, surrounded by dams. Without modern heavy-duty electric and diesel pumps, the Dutch managed for centuries to divert water from polders (and today these territories make up a good quarter of the kingdom) with the help of ... mills.

The Dutch polder mill produced nothing. She pumped water into the bypass channel and saved lives. Therefore, the mill in the Dutch mentality is a survival tool. Not for nothing that most of them bore the name "De Hoop" - "Hope". This is not an insidious adversary, as in Don Quixote. The enemy, the object of conquest of the Dutch is one - the sea.

On the contrary, the symbol of safety is depicted in the image of the mill., a constant motif of pictorial meditations. Mills adorn the paintings of most Dutch artists. Wynand Nuyen's are frightening in their splendor, Jan van Goyen's are smoky, transparent, Meindert's Hobbems are bourgeois-cosy, with swans, Johan Jongkind's are cheerful, romantic caricature, Paul Gabriel's are dark, like illustrations for old fairy tales, Johan Hendrik Weiserbruch's minimalist, Hugo Landheer's naive-bast, Jakob Maris's industrial-impressionist, Jan Slauthers and early Mondrian's red, blushing, Rembrandt's home, sketchy. And even a contemporary of Cervantes, an admirer of the chivalric romance, the Amsterdam playwright Gerbrand Adrians Bredero, in his famous 1613 comedy The Miller's Joke, made the mill a symbol of hope for the best. “t Kan verkeren” (“Everything can turn around”), the deceived wife says to the dissolute miller in the play, mentally repeating the movement of a spinning mill. The phrase became winged "...

Miller Fred, one of the few remaining in the profession, tells the correspondent of Radio Liberty about his work: “Inside every mill is a dwelling for a miller. The miller was obliged to live at the mill, because the wind is an unpredictable thing. And as soon as the wind appeared, it was necessary without wasting time to grab it by the tail. Sometimes the wind blew for 48 or even 72 hours straight, so it was beneficial to have a worker always on site. Housing at the mill was free, plus peat for heating, candles. The millers were hardly paid a salary, for example, some 80-100 guilders a year. So they had to be hired as workers for the peasants, sell vegetables from their garden, in general, always earn extra money. The period of hard work at the mill was, as a rule, during the dark winter time. The North Sea is nearby, 20 kilometers away. In good weather, as now, the mills were not used. The mills only worked in bad weather. So the millers had to work in the dark, in the cold... A miller must also be able to predict the weather and use it.”...

For more information about the Dutch windmill as part of the Dutch mentality, see the audio file in the upper left corner of this page.

The material from the archive of the site was transmitted by the American radio station "Radio Liberty", Russian broadcasting, on January 31, 2007, as a sign of the 600th anniversary of the invention of the first polder mill, celebrated in 2007 in Holland. The report is abbreviated. Recording an audio radio program from the site

Recording of audio radio program, preface and note Portalostrahah.ru

Additionally:

Dutch windmills

Below is the text from the official publication “Holland. Mosaic of Impressions (2013, Russian), published by the Dutch Alliance in Russia (tourism promotion community). We have annotated these excerpts on the website:

“Once Holland was called the country of ten thousand windmills, but now there are over a thousand historical vertical mills, and this is more than in any other country in the world. Vertical mills come in a variety of forms, from column mills, including hollow column mills, to tower mills and octagonal mills. In fact, these are all variations of a rotary mill, in which there is a vertical column, and the wings connected to it can turn to face the wind. Some vertical mills have a simple central column, while others even have extensive rooms that served as a dwelling for the miller.

There are windmills in Holland different types, and each of them has a specific purpose: pumping water, draining polders (plots of land located in the lowlands), sawing wood, grinding grain, and many others.

Some areas are known specifically for windmills, so visiting them must be included in any tour of Holland:

Kinderdijk is an area where windmills pump water between the river and the polders. (Kinderdijk is a small village in the province of South Holland, about 15 km east of Rotterdam. The name Kinderdijk is translated as “children's dam” in memory of the flood of 1421, when a floating wooden cradle with a rescued child and a cat was found in the flooded area. Note Portalostanah.ru);

Windmills of Schiedam - the highest in the world. Of the original twenty, only five survived. In 2006, a modern wind turbine similar to a traditional windmill was built in the area. (The city and community of Schiedam are located in the southwest of the Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The aforementioned old mills of Schiedam date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, the wingspan of these mills is about 26 meters, and the height of the highest of the local old mills is De Noord At 44.5 meters, it is the tallest ancient windmill in the world, while the modern De Nolet wind turbine, built in Schiedam in 2006 and stylized as an old mill, is almost ten meters taller than De Noord.

Zaanse Schans is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the north of Holland. This open-air museum village brings together historic buildings and windmills to give visitors an idea of ​​what Holland was like in earlier centuries. (Zaanse Schans is a village in the province of North Holland, not far from the city of Zaandam. Note site);

Amsterdam - the city with eight windmills. These include the polder-draining mill, Molen van Stolen, the only functioning De Otter sawmill, and the de Goyer towers that dominate the popular Brouwerij ’t IJ brewery. (The name of Amsterdam, the main city of the Netherlands, comes from the phrase "dam ( dam) on the river Amstel". Note. website);

Getting to know windmills in Holland is a very exciting experience. The Dutch restored many of them. Every year (namely, every second Saturday in May) the Netherlands celebrates National Mill Day..

On National Mill Day, millers go out of their way to decorate their windmills and watermills with flowers and flags. Some of them even organize tours and other activities. On this day you will have a chance to see a piece of Dutch historical heritage because mills played a fundamental role in the development of Holland, both geographically and economically.”

You can also read on the site about another symbol of Holland -. In our section about ... Turkey. After all, the tulip, like the windmills, has by no means always been part of the Dutch landscape. In fact, the tulip was originally considered a Turkish (Ottoman) flower. In Turkey, it is still considered the national flower.

Holland. Accents, associations, the brightest strokes - the first thing that came to mind.
Eternal reveler, relaxed Amsterdam with its canals and "Red" quarters. Unexpected almost love for Rotterdam. Admiration for the scale of the battle with water for every meter of land. Gentle sun warming on sandy beach The Hague under the waves of the North Sea. Regret about the failure with the Dutch herring (it turns out that for this it is advisable to come to Holland in June). Wooden shoes at every step. Huge colorful fields of tulips. And, of course, windmills - there are more than a thousand of them in Holland.

They say that there is even a special holiday in this country - Mill Day (Miller's Day) - every second Saturday in May, 600 water and windmills open their doors to visitors throughout the country. It is now that the mills are perceived as a symbolic Dutch pastoral, an ornament and a magnet to attract tourists, but there was a time for them to work - they grinded, sawed, but most importantly, they drained the spaces and pumped out water. So with their help, man used the power of nature for good.

One of the places where tourists come to rendezvous with windmills against the backdrop of a typical Dutch landscape is the village of Kinderdijk.

I read on one of the sites: "The motto on the coat of arms of the Netherlands reads:" I fight and swim out!
More precisely, you can’t say. The whole essence of Dutch life for many centuries.
By the 11th century, the Dutch were running out of land. At first, they fought for land with the help of canals and dams, later they learned to use wind energy and entire systems of pumps driven by windmills. Dozens of mills pumped water from canal to canal, eventually diverting it behind dams. Thus, additional land arose, or, in the words of Voltaire, "God created the earth, and the Dutch added Holland to it."

So I'm going to Kinderdijk to see nineteen working mills. By ship, by river.
Water transport in the Netherlands is very important. ferries, boats, river trams and even taxis in cities are the usual ways of transporting passengers, a Dutch everyday life. And for us, visitors, this is also an opportunity to see Holland from a slightly different angle - from the water.

From Rotterdam to Kinderdijk can be reached by ship. The pier should be looked for near the Erasmus bridge. I got a pleasure boat, delivering to the place, waiting and returning back. All the fun cost 15 euros.

There was a bar on board, and green tea and apple pie were found in the bar just in time.

At first, the passengers settled on the deck, they did not have time to freeze.

The ship is moving slowly, around Rotterdam, huge barges, smaller vessels are sailing past, and all this between the banks of the river, carefully fortified.
Forest areas are also no exception.
Not in vain, not in vain, Peter I, studied with the Dutch.

On the ship to Kinderdijk sailed a little over an hour.
By the middle of the journey, the most persistent, not afraid of the wind, or the happy owners of hats remained on the deck.
Soon the wind and rain completely drove the audience inside.

Arrived at the pier. The ferry in the photo transports passengers and cars from one coast to another.

To the very mill village, marked by UNESCO, from the pier, about fifteen minutes at a fast pace.
But we must take into account - it may not work out quickly, you are constantly distracted to photograph something from the surrounding "cuteness".

The nineteen windmills of Kinderdijk were built around 1740 at the confluence of the rivers Nord and Lek.
The main purpose of the local windmills was to regulate the water level in the river.
The mills themselves served as a place of work and housing for the local residents of Kinderdijk.

Kinderdijk was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997.

The word "Kinderdijk" is translated from Dutch as "children's dam". It is said that the village received this name in memory of an event that occurred during the flood in 1421. The storm subsided, a cradle was washed ashore, and in it people found a peacefully sleeping baby.

Mills in Kinderdijk are called "polder". A polder is land reclaimed from the water, drained and cultivated. Polders are located below sea level, so mills are needed to drain them. Such polders make up a decent part of the territory of the Netherlands. This is about the diligence, ingenuity of the Dutch and the painstaking creation of their country by them.

The inhabitants of Holland needed a water level control system to protect the land from flooding. To get rid of excess water from the Alblasserwaard polder, to which Kinderdijk belongs, artificial channels were dug. But later the channels were not enough. A new way to keep the polders dry was the construction of windmills. With their help, water was pumped and kept in the inner basin between the level of the polders and the water level in the river.

But this is a glorious past, and the present of the Kinderdijk mills is to delight with the very fact of its existence.
Walks along the central paths are free, you can get inside one mill.
Ticket price - 6 euros (April 2014).
You can approach the desired mill by the bridge.

It is said that in winter the Kinderdijk canals freeze and become a natural skating rink.
Until the 20th century, skating through frozen canals was the most in a simple way get from one point to another.
And why the successes of the Dutch in speed skating are not surprising.

And here are the insides of the "tourist" mill.
Melnik and his family.

Everyday details of the life of the miller's family.

The whole life of the mill boils around the constantly rotating central pillar.
On the top floor there is a mechanism that sets the restless pillar in motion. You can see through the iron mesh.

Middle floor, beds in wardrobes and other details.

Lower floor.
Kitchen, dining room, bedroom - in the complex.

Long winter evenings.

They say that by the position of the mill wings, the neighbors could find out what was going on in the miller's family. If nothing extraordinary - after completing the work, the miller stopped the mill wings in the position of a straight cross - one wing is parallel to the ground, the other is perpendicular. The slopes of the wings in could mean an addition to the family or the death of loved ones.

In the meantime, I looked around and moved to the exit.
And people still live in the mills, but this is a completely different story, closed from prying eyes.

There is a bike path along the canal.

You can also take a boat ride along the canal.

It's time to leave Kinderdijk and, on the way to the pier, once again look at the quiet, calm, not in a hurry Holland.

AirPano invites you on a journey to the land of 10,000 windmills, as Holland was once called.

Mills were invented in ancient times, and for a long time they were the only mechanisms used by mankind. With the development of steam engines in the 19th century, the use of mills gradually began to decline - almost everywhere, with the exception of Holland. This is due to its geography.

To begin with, the common name "Holland" is not entirely correct: South and North Holland are only two of the 12 provinces of the country. However, they were the most advanced technically, which led to their wide popularity outside the state. The country itself is officially called the "Netherlands". This word means " lowlands", recalling that locals settled in the flat lowlands of river deltas. About half of the territory on which 60% of the population lives lies below sea level, and another 1/3 has a height of less than 1 m. At the same time, 10% of the territory was obtained by drainage, and mills played a large role in this.

Reclaiming the land from the water element, the Dutch built a system of parallel canals, and dozens of mills pumped water through them, diverting it beyond the dam that surrounded the drained area. It was also important that the drained low-lying areas (polders) remain dry. For this, windmills have been developed capable of pumping water and keeping it in the inland basin at an intermediate level between the level of the polders and the water level in the river.

At present, the water level is regulated automatically with the help of modern equipment and pumping stations, but before their invention, every village had its own mill. Holland was then called "the land of 10,000 windmills". Now there are much fewer of them - about 1000, but even this is more than anywhere else in the world. All of them are no longer of practical use, remaining a historical museum heritage.

Among the places best known for their windmills is the village of Zaanse Schans, located in the north of the country. It is said that Napoleon, who visited these parts, described it as "unique in its kind." Today, there is an open-air museum here, where, in addition to mills, ancient buildings are presented - examples of wooden architecture of the 17th-18th centuries.

Of considerable interest is the village of Kinderdijk, which lies in the province of South Holland at the confluence of two rivers - Lek and Nord. Around 1740, 19 windmills were built here to drain the polders, and this group is now the largest concentration of old windmills in the whole country. In 1997, the Kinderdijk windmill complex was listed world heritage UNESCO. It is worth noting that with all the practice of dealing with the elements developed by the Dutch, the latter often turned out to be one step ahead - full control over the water level was never achieved. Kinderdijk, like many others settlements Holland, has been flooded more than once due to destroyed dams.

In the city of Schiedam in the same province, five windmills have been preserved - with a height of about 40 m, they are the largest in the world. And in 2006, a wind turbine similar to a traditional windmill was built in the area.

By the way, the first windmills that produce electricity were invented in the 19th century in Denmark: for Holland, then the issue of draining the land was more relevant. But now wind turbines are being built everywhere - according to 2014 data, the country is in 17th place in the world in terms of wind energy production.

And windmills, although they have gone down in history, have not been forgotten. Windmill Day is celebrated every year on the second Saturday of May in the Netherlands. On this holiday, more than 600 of them open their doors to visitors, and millers demonstrate their art. You and I do not have to wait for a special day to get acquainted with this most interesting page in the history of Holland: just take a walk with the help of our panoramas.