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The Markener in the material:
Material cultural landscape and identity construction in Marken, North-Holland.
Anna Miorelli | annamiorelli1@gmail.com
Student Number: 11251115 Marken, North Holland
MSC Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Amsterdam Advisor: Vincent de Rooij | Readers: O.G.A. Verkaaik and Rob van Ginkel
Submission: 1/23/18 | Defense: 1/30/18 word count: 22,403
2 Abstract:
The focus of this fieldwork revolved around Markener identity and the material cultural landscape of the town Marken, North-Holland. I observed the types of relationships Markeners have with their material cultural landscape. These relationships I argue are a part of processes involved in the everyday construction, through boundary maintenance (Barth,1969) of Markener identity. The method of this fieldwork was to observe the everyday activities, or ways of being (Ingold, 2000), Markeners engaged in with their built environment. Using Ingold’s theory of “Dwelling” as a lens of both observation and analysis I identify three relationships between the Marken people and their built cultural landscape. The relationships I have discerned are as follows; through an ambiguous definition of private-public spaces with regards to material landscape, through incorporating foreign iconographies as representations of a local identity in the material landscape, and through the autonomous nature of the Markener with regards to the regional material landscape. Each of these material related relationships is a part of the larger myriad of cultural processes Markeners engage in and which form components in the ongoing construction of the identity of the Markeners. (Ingold, 2000) Through self-reflexive analysis of these relationships, in each chapter, I argue that these relationships are types of processes, also known as “ways of being,” which Ingold describes as actively constructing the cultural identity of these people. I use the symbolic material iconography of the Moor of Marken, throughout this research in an ongoing vignette, to situate this research paper in the wider contextual dynamics of Marken. These being the influence of tourism, the regional history, and the autonomous nature of the Marken people with regards to governmental influence. I suggest that these embodied processes can be used to discern a web of larger societal constructions in Dutch society. Issues of race, economy and gender are discussed briefly.
Keywords:
Material culture, Heritage, Cultural Landscape, Processes of identification, Marken, North-Holland, the Netherlands, Wapen, Moor, Architecture, Ingold, Dwelling, Race, Economy, Gender, Tourism
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I would like to say thank you to my family Aleida Dominguez-Miorelli, Joseph Miorelli, and Cami Miorelli for supporting me in this endeavor….
Special thanks to my supervisor Vincent de Rooij for the guidance and freedom in the process of writing this paper….
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TABLE OF CONTENTS |
Reference Maps………6-7 Introduction……….9 Chapter 1………22 Chapter 2………34 Chapter 3………48Notes on culture/identity relationship…..……..63
Conclusion……….68
Bibliography………..71
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Maps |
It is around 40 minutes to travel from Amsterdam Central to Marken by bus. It costs around 8 euros both ways. Buses run from the 8am till around 11pm on weekdays. This differs drastically from about one hundred years ago where the only way to reach the island was during strong winds, which will take half an hour from a location on the IJ. (Roodenburg, 2002: 186) Sources: Top:, Bottom: http://www.gemeentemarken.nl/marken-geschiedenis.html7
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Introduction |
Horses walking on water and tall ships sailing through grass; these are the hallucinogenic mirages imbedded into the cultural landscape of regional Waterland. The hyper-flat landscape of the polders accentuate a paradoxical reality between engineered and feral beauty. When in route from Amsterdam to Marken the speed of the bus adds a cinematic drama to the very commonplace reality of this suburban landscape. Between verdant flashes intermingled with multiple shades of blue and grey, an obvious aperture to the past can be spotted across the Markermeer. The low and wide sea-ships of the Zuiderzee are echoed in the 1800s replicas which still cruise the lake today. Waterland, in its simple strangeness, is a countryside fertile with romantic imagination. It is a place which temporally still exists and at the same time once was.
Marken was once an island eclipsed by the salty water of the Zuiderzee (South sea) and now, after the engineered closure of the Zuiderzee (South sea) with the Afsluitdijk (enclosing dike) in 1950, Marken is a peninsula connected by a seawall road across the fresh water of the Markermeer. [Fig.1] While you cross the seawall, the windows of the bus act like a historic projection and for a moment, and you catch the wide brim of a black hat and faintly, the ghostly echo of fishermen dragging their nets. Marken is a place with its secrets and shadows, an intimate community, a mysterious “wax museum” to those who are not from there.
“How do people live on that Island?” I have heard many native Amsterdamers remark. “The homes are so uniformed and like a museum, on display, for everyone, how can anyone live there? What do they do?” I have heard various comments like this from my fellow university colleagues about Marken. “I would prefer studying Volendam, don’t they have a history of incest there?” Comments like these were frequent throughout my research. Surprisingly, the cultural diversity in Marken is as intense as Amsterdam. Yet, this diversity has a temporal demarcation; a boundary which encases the early morning until late afternoon, when the hordes of international tourists come off of buses and descended down the well-worn historic paths of Marken.
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[Fig.1] Maps of regional geographic context 1850(Left) to 2009(right) Source: http://www.docukit.nl/spreekbeurt/het-zuiderzeemuseum
Marken recalls an imaginary illustrated best by these classic Netherlandish painters from the 17th century. These imaginary landscapes in a sense reveal the inner relationship of the Netherlandish artist, with the landscape. His imagination projects an imbedded-ness of man within the landscape. It is the land made and formed in the image of man. This concept of the Netherlandish landscape being constructed in the image of man, is not just poetic, it is somewhat literal, as Marken resides today, just on the horizon of the famous engineered polder landscape of Waterland. [Fig.3]
[Fig. 2] Right: Dutch school anonymous, unknown Netherlands south. 1570. Landscape anthropomorphic, portrait of woman. Left: Herman Saftleven the Younger, 1650. Source: https://pleasantpastime.com/anthropomorphic-landscape/ , http://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/the-anthropomorphic-landscapes-of-the-17th-century-or-why-being-human-is-to-see-ourselves-everywhere/
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In reference to this region of the Netherlands, North Holland is commonly described as a landscape shaped by man out of utilitarian necessity against the rising sea water. This utilitarian angst forms a narrative of man’s struggle with nature and it is a factual reality as the Netherlands has fabricated and engineered most of its natural landscape. (See Annex 1 for more specifics on regional context)
In partnership to this factual cliché, I suggest that these paintings [Fig.2] hint at something a little deeper about the relationship between man and the landscape. What they suggest is perhaps a certain internal cultural way of being (Ingold,2000). An internal struggle, projected into the land, which becomes activated through the actions and activities man engages in with the natural environment. In regard to the various internal cultural processes of the people of Waterland, these “ways of being” (Ingold, 2000), have envisioned the natural landscape in the image of man’s necessities reflecting their struggling internal disposition.
Man’s internal ways of being are in a sense activated through relationships with the land and they are continually maintained through everyday relationships with the manifested cultural landscape. (Ingold, 2000) Here is where looking to the everyday relationships of a cultural group with their material cultural landscape can be revealing about certain internal ways of being and these internal ways of being can reveal facets and processes which help construct components of a cultural groups collective identity.
[Fig.3] Waterland Polder Landscape Source :http://cordablogg.blogspot.nl/2013_08_01_archive.html
This deep regional connection between the material landscape and man; the constant engineering, the grappling and transformation of the land and man’s activities with the land, is
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what made me initially curious about this specific group of perceived authentic Dutch people;
the Markeners. This made me curious of their specific relationships related to their specific
material landscape. What about the Marken people is imbedded in their material cultural landscape? What relationships with the material cultural landscape could be discerned, which could hint at some forms of internal, “ways of being.” (Ingold, 2000)
[Fig.4] Left: Men fishing for eels around Marken, Dates: 1900 till 1920, http://www.vintag.es/2016/07/40-rare-vintage-photographs-that.html?m=1
[Fig.5] Right: Location of Buckfast bee research and breeding ground on Marken. For more information on this rare bee project see https://aristabeeresearch.org/ The honey can be purchased at the milk farm down the road from the bee farm on Oosterpad road. Source: Goggle Maps, Date: January 2018.
The physical landscape on the island of Marken was first populated by monks from Friesland, in the 13th century. The Marken Ferry-express website states that they initially made
a living by farming. (Marken Express, 2018) However the area was susceptible to extreme
flooding, making agarin pursuits on the island precarious, before the Afsluitdijk was constructed around 1950. Historic activities (ways of being), such as fishing for eels as a primary food source, or the processes of constructing homes on raised land, called “terps”, involved a finessed, intimate, relationship between Marken people and their landscape.
Today there is no longer an immediate threat of flooding thanks to the dikes constructed around the perimeter of the former island. Today on the peninsula of Marken because of the ecological shift in land morphology, not only does a micro trade of wool and milk exist but also a rare form of bee, the “Buckfast bee”, was introduced and is breed on the island. This ecological shift in the region has drastically interfered with the activities Markeners engage in with the land, this influences the ways in which material culture in the landscape is used. For example, the homes which were once on stilts have now been retrofitted with a ground level living space. Another example of a transition in the way the material culture is used by
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Markeners, is now with the advent of Airbnb, many of the traditional Markener homes are rented out to foreigners, when formerly, there was only one hotel on the island and there was only one traditional home, owned by Widow Teerhuis in the late 1800s (Roodenburg, 2002:190) for foreigners to sleep in.
[Fig.5.5] This is the webpage for all the Markeners who live abroad now. It appears that the community keeps close watch over those who have moved away. The MES website, is a weekly updated website, which has the aesthetics of the 1990s, it is where the community finds out about local events, alongside the corresponding Facebook for this webpage. Source: Mesmarken.nl
Whereas before the 1920s the cultural activities and material landscape of the island were centered, solely, around the regional economic activity of fishing and the ecological threat of flooding; today, with the absence of a mono-economic means of living, the residents of Marken are scattered and around the world and many of them commute to, or now live in, the larger regional metropolises; such as Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hauge. With the ecological transition of the salty south sea into the fresh water Markermeer, we see a drastic, and rapid economic transition, as there is evidence that fishing as an economic practice, had existed on the island since the 1600s.“In the 17th and 18th centuries, the growth of the population went hand in hand with the emergence of a new source of income, namely fishing. New houses which were needed at that time were no longer built on terpen, but on wooden pillars.” (Marken Express, 2018) (Fig.9) This is about 300 years of a centralized, regional
economy, which in the process of 30 years from about 1920 till 1950 completely disappeared. My main informant Eefje Visser, described to me that “not one person on the island, fishes today.”
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So, it appears, rather than remaining together as a community which, identifies as fishermen throughout all these, ecological, economic and social changes; that with the individualistic advantages of modern technology in the 20th century1 and with the loss of this collective practice of fishing, the community of Marken seems to have developed a more individualistic, dispersed and outward looking means of gaining income. 2
I am most curious of this drastic change with regards to the material cultural landscapes of Marken. From a local, mono-economic to a global, diverse economic theater after such a long period of stability. One would think then, considering the enormous influx of tourism on the island, in the early 1900s, which increased while the fishing economy on the island decreased, that more people on the island would have transitioned from a centralized fishing economy to a centralized tourism economy. However, Eefje Visser also described, that “today only 4% of the island is engaged with the economic practice of tourism industry on the island. The majority of the tourism on the island is actually delegated by outside sources. In order to understand tourism on Marken, Key and K. Pillai give a good general outline, as to how tourism should be perceived within the anthropological lens of study:
“Tourism is a complex socio-cultural experience system that cannot be understood except in relationship to the overarching structures in the world system. Yet it is not enough to understand the macro structures without examining how tourism is played out at the local level in the tourist-host encounter. In other words, the economy, political structures, and ideological constructions interact within an arena where the tourist-host encounter becomes a microcosm of the dynamic and fluctuating changes in the production of social relationships. Tourism conceptualizations have included a sacred pilgrimage for authenticity (MacCannell 1976); a pilgrimage (Allcock, 1988; Graburn, 1983) a form of imperialism (Crick 1996; Harrsion 1991, Nash 1989) an agent of social change (Greenwood, 1972), and the commodification of culture (Greenwood,1997)”- (Key and K. Pillai, 2007:130)
These tourism conceptualizations, particularly “the commodification of culture” (Greenwood,1997), and “pilgrimage”( Allcock, 1988; Graburn, 1983) are perhaps the best conceptualizations to look at with regards to Marken and tourism. Pilgrimage (Allcock, 1988; Graburn, 1983) is a major concept, considering that tourists tend to use Marken as pastoral processional by-way towards Volendam. This pilgrimage is pursued in order to explore the
1Such as rapid and accessible travel along with quicker and more secure means of communication
2 of course there are most likely other factors involved in this dispersal, as it is a complex process,of which only a basic structure of
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authentic Holland, away from the cosmopolitan intensity of Amsterdam. Marken is in essence
a sight-seeing corridor, where in a commodified fashion, you can buy clogs at the entrance to the town, eat little pancakes “poffertjes” in the harbor and take a ferry ride from the Harbor over to Volendam. (see map figure 17 in chapter 1)
[Fig.6] Image taken by photo journalists, Date: 1900-1920 Source: http://www.vintag.es/2016/07/40-rare-vintage-photographs-that.html?m=1 [Fig.7 ] Image taken by Artist, from 1970-1990 source: https://www.henkvanderleeden.com/225238634/marken-jan-schouten date: 1970-1998
Since the early 1900s, Marken’s material, cultural-landscape, has been perceived within the touristic imagination as a quintessential “Dutch” fishing village, many native Amsterdamers I have spoken with see it as “a living wax museum” (Amsterdam native). (Fig.6, Fig.7, Fig.8)
[Fig.8] This photograph depicts the “authentic” touristic perception of Marken as a quintessential “Dutch” cultural-landscape, this photographer traveled the Netherlands in a before they pass series, conducted by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Date: January 2014, Source: https://www.jimmynelson.com/journey/the-netherlands
Looking at these three images from three different time periods across the 20th century, all taken by non-Marken photographers, it becomes a little clearer how this perception of the
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Marken people as a crystalized ethnicity forms itself. The world-famous tourist, Rick Steve’s once visited Marken, traveling by a traditional wooden fishing boat from Marken. “It was a
time of wooden boats and iron men” (Rick Steves Travel Blog, 2015) (Fig. 8) remarked a local
Markener steering rick towards the island. This way of being consisted of 2 men in one wooden boat who would travel out across the Zuiderzee from Monday till Friday and come back for church on the weekend. (Rick Steves Travel Blog, 2015)
This imagination of Marken existing today still as it once was, was shaped by a diverse group of artisans, academics and traveling journalists long before Rick Steves set off for his touristic dominion of Europe :
“Marken was "different," they agreed. For most of them, the island evoked images of Holland's Golden Age, of its robust and glorious seventeenth century. Others perceived a "Teutonic" past, imagined themselves as having landed among a "primitive tribe," or even construed the islanders as direct descendants of Neanderthal man. Written and illustrated sources from the period offer a surprising palette of national glorification, primitivism, and race. Mass tourism soon entered the scene, fostered by convenient transportation. As of 1885, one could take the steam tram to the small town of Monnickendam, where the boat to Marken was moored. Around 1900 a direct ferry service (the "Marken Express") was even established between Amsterdam and the island. By 1905, a travel guide could already lament, "What is wrong with Marken is that for the most part it consists of sightseers" (Lucas 1905:19)” (Roodenburg, 2002: 173)
In a reflexive turn from this touristic imagination, which saw the Marken people as a group of primitives, strange, others; I found an anecdotal comment on the “Rick Steves” website which indicates a curious encounter of a tourist receiving ridicule at the hands of Markeners in 1902.
“Marken has been on the tourist trail a long time. My great-grandfather took the family on the grand tour of Europe in 1902. My grandfather’s journal tells of the sail boat ride to Marken. At that time the locals wore traditional dress. My great-aunt, fourteen years old at the time, was embarrassed that the local teens laughed at the way she was dressed.” – Posted by Chip on Rick Steves Travel Blog, October 2015, 10:18am
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[Fig. 8] Left: A “Man of Iron” on a traditional wooden fishing boat. Date: 20th century Source:
http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/nl/geheugen/view?coll=ngvn&identifier=NOMA01%3AAA771
[Fig.9] Middle: Traditional fishing costume of the Markener, depicted by Pieter van den around 1669-1689, from the Rijksmuseum collection.
It is interesting to see here how the foreigner becomes the object of exoticism with regards to clothing style, from the perspective of Markener children. Whereas in the past these costumes were an everyday outfit, today they are used only for traditional rituals Queens day (Fig.10), weddings, and commencements of historic events. I will note here that my gatekeeper Eefje, told me that there were, however, three women in the village whom wear their traditional costume every day.3
This historic crystallization of a “primitive” man to be encountered within a touristic framework, provided an interesting precedent for my research. Foreseeing the eventual loss of the traditional fishing economy of the Zuiderzee, folkloristics set forth to document the “ways of being,” before they changed. (Fig.11) In an effort to save Marken from the drastic economic and ecological changes which the closure of the Zuiderzee and the creation of the Markermeer
3 I did not get a chance to meet these women and the costumes of Marken were not a part of the material landscape focus of my
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would bring, the material cultural-landscape and people of Marken became a crystalized treasure of unique, endangered, “Dutch” folkloric ethnicity.
In a symbiotic fashion, today Markeners display in their museums the remnants of these the folkloric records. (Fig.11) The visual interpretations of the everyday life of the Marken people was shepherded by foreign artists who in a “intimist”4 (The editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998) style, depicted the interiors, interactions and costumes of the island of Marken. Today within the Marken Museum, they are hung on the wall to represent the historic narratives and heritage of Markeners. In a sense folklorists, artisans and even physical anthropologists, were involved in shaping the ways Markeners engage with their material heritage. (Roodenburg, 2002)
[Fig.11] Left: Collection of paintings by various artists hung in the Marken Museum, source: http://www.markermuseum.nl/?gallery=paul-kuiper Dates: late 1800s.
[Fig.12 ] Right: I took this photograph in June 2017 of an artist in the harbor selling his depictions of Marken. Source: Anna Miorelli
What is fascinating is that this preserved material heritage today is a part of the assumed “identity’ of the contemporary people of Marken, through the touristic imagination, as though Marken is a static environment. It is perceived as though the environment has become crystallized “as it once was.” Even the terms “traditional” and “authentic,” are used to describe Marken as a remote, isolated, place of the past.
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“ ‘Here we saw life in a new appearance as if at the ends of the earth. Here lives a small tribe or settlement, separated from the mother country by but a small sea and yet so different from the rest of the population, as though the distance between them was a hundred times greater" (Wood 1878: 134)’”- ( Roodenburg, 2002:188)
This superimposition of time in the imagination of the outsider, who visits Marken, invokes a place which never experiences change; from as far back as the late 19th century, persisting through the tourism industry today:
“Separated by a storm from the mainland in medieval times, Marken stands as
a traditional Dutch fishing village frozen in time. Though today reconnected with a dike, the small island (now peninsular) town retains much of its tradition and culture. Wander along the waterfront and down quiet streets surrounded by wooden houses, and you'll feel as though you've stepped back several centuries. Keep an eye out for the "Horse of Marken," a lighthouse on the peninsula with a 16 m (54 ft.) tower dedicated to guiding sailors and fishermen to safety. Stop by the local museum to learn more about age-old Dutch traditions, the history of the town, and the traditional clothing worn in the past by the population. Don't miss the wooden shoe workshop in the village, which produces a classic symbol of Holland. Make Marken a centerpiece of your Marken vacation itinerary, and
find what else is worth visiting using our Marken trip planner .” ( Debloukas,
2017)
Considering the fascinating relationship between man and the landscape in the Netherlands, I was curious of Marken because of this “crystallized” nature foregrounded by previous journalists, folklorists and physical anthropologists. I was curious of how the Marken people associate themselves with their built environment. As an aspiring anthropologist, with a background in Landscape-Architecture and Design, my focus of fieldwork revolved around the ways Markener identity is embodied in the material, cultural-landscape. How is Markener identity constructed through, every day, “ways of being” (Ingold,2000) in the cultural landscape of heritage, in Marken, North-Holland?
My logistical limitations, as a field worker, greatly influenced what type of information I was able to retrieve from the field. They were as follows; a change in initial research question and strategy, not speaking Dutch and using a translator, living in Amsterdam and a temporal constraint, of only three months to conduct research. These constraints, along with my existing skill set in Architecture and Design, helped to define the parameters of what was possible to
research with regards to the concept of identity construction. Thus, the material, within the
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practical constraints I had as a researcher. Hence this research is highly observation informed and uses excerpts from my richest ethnographic interviews, with substantiating excerpts from other interlocutors within the town.
The opportunities of the research are to be found within the very constraints. The methodology I used focused on a month and a half of purely observational notations and photographic analysis. Essentially this is akin to an Architectural approach of site analysis, where you immerse yourself in the built environment and observe the ways the local people interact with the surrounding landscape. This is done in order to have a solid first person encounter with how I perceive the site as being used, compared to how my informants perceive their sites as being used. It was important to witness behaviors first, without the native influence of my informants clouding the data. The next month and a half of this field work, was used to strategically interview on the spot, various locals, on their relationships with various aspects of the material cultural landscape, which were curious to me as an aspiring anthropologist. The focus of this research is on the Marken people and the physical material landscape of heritage, in the cultural landscape of Marken. Hence, I selected Ingold’s theoretical framework of “dwelling”, which focuses on the study of the built environmental landscape, as a method from which to observe the cultural processes, or “ways of being” which constitute components of identity construction.
Through analytical dissection of how these relationships are involved in everyday “ways of being,” I describe how the Markener identity is embodied in their built cultural landscape. This ethnographic research seeks to provide insight into the dynamic processes which connect identity construction, material iconography and the material cultural-landscape of Marken.
As Ingold explains: “environments are never complete but are continually under construction.” (Ingold, 2000: 172) and in those environments, which humans inhabit, “it is in the very process of dwelling that we build” (Ingold,2000: 188). Building for Ingold is not the “simple transcription” of imagined designs upon the environment; rather the imagined design
is a part of the process of “dwelling,” which already exists in the connection between humans
and their environment. The building is not the “crystallization of human activity” in the environment, it is not a constructed object or specimen outside of the human body, rather it is a part of the ways of being that are there before the structure is built and after it is built. Buildings are dynamic “processes” based on the activities around them. The built house and the
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activities of it have, as Ingold argues, historically been perceived as dichotomous, rather than embedded within each other. It is this embedded-ness of people’s activities with their environments, building as a part of the environment, which constitutes Ingold’s definition of “dwelling.”
In my research I use Ingold’s definition of “dwelling” as a theoretical lens to look at identity construction in Marken, within the cultural landscape, as it relates to certain processes/ “ways of being” which through this “theory of dwelling” reflect Markener community identity.
Below I have identified three cultural processes or “ways of being” by which the community identity of the “Markener” is actively constructed through the material in the cultural landscape of Marken; through the ambiguous private-public relationship of the Markener with his environment, through the usage of the foreign as a local motif, and through the autonomous nature of the Markener as hinted at through the material landscape. I present many details and excerpts of various activities and ways of being which I have observed throughout my field work, however, these are the three strongest relationships I was able to discern, which reflect something about the identity of the Markeners.
Within each of these chapters, I reflect on various examples of these relationships through urban mapping, photography and ethnographic interview. These relationships which are a part of the cultural identity of the Markeners can be used to discern a web of larger societal constructions in Dutch society. Issues of race, economy and gender are discussed briefly, with regards to the embodied processes surrounding the relationships I have observed above.
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CHAPTER 1|
The ambiguous private-publicVoyeurism, spatial power, and ownership in the cultural landscape of heritage
What was I looking for in Marken? Who was I looking for? The more the days passed by and the more the weeks turned into months, I started to feel lost in my fieldwork. Why am I studying these people? Observation can take an isolative toll and it takes discipline to remain away from contact. “Yes, they have some beautiful aesthetic fabrics and an interesting fishing history, but what is my meaning for being here today? What is curious or captivating about the way these people dwell in their urban environment?” I had to reflect back on my initial research question, which began with a riddle that has always puzzled me; I had to rethink what brought me to Anthropology from Architecture to begin with:
How and why do one group of people, use the image of another group of people to represent themselves?
Initially my field work research was to be situated in the Canary Islands, studying the contemporary material usage of an indigenous group on the Islands, called the Guanches. I was curious as to how and why this indigenous group became assimilated into the contemporary population and how the contemporary, Canarian, population used the material iconography of the Guanches to represent a local Canarian identity.
So, what remained of my original research proposal now, had to be converted to situate a community somewhere near Amsterdam. Considering my economic constraints at the time which hindered me from continuing the Canarian research, I chose another island community, the Markeners, for their, peculiar, relationships with the material landscape and reframed my initial research question to focus, less on the topic of indigeneity, more on the relationships of humans and their material cultural landscapes.
Yet during my lost wandering in this small town, I had absolutely no idea I would come, serendipitously, face to emblematic face with the very topic I was so curious about in my initial research: a group of people, the Markeners, using the image of another group of people, A Moor, to represent themselves on their official heraldic seal (Wapen) of Marken.
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I was about a month into critically observing the built environment, and at that point I was even a bit desperate. The people were friendly yet distant and there seemed to be less material culture of interest than I had initially assumed about Marken. It was here where the story begins.
I was visiting the official Marken museum, attempting to communicate with a few jolly elderly women, who seemed like they were sisters, yet were only old friends. I was trying to explain something in English, to a young French woman, since the two women working in the museum only spoke Dutch.
“The characteristic orange dress on a cloth doll represented the traditional Queens Day costume for the Markeners…” Mid-sentence, my eyes caught something glittering underneath the glass display case of souvenirs. It was similar to a bumper-sticker I had seen on my mother’s car of a German town we had lived in when I was young. Triangular, stark blue and yellow and red…. It was a heraldic seal of Marken. (Fig.13)
[Fig.13] Moor of Marken sticker on the right and official black and white seal of the Moor of Marken which is used for the official event planners of the town of Marken, you are not allowed to copy any of the images on the MES website, so the quality of the logo is a little poor. Source: Anna Miorelli ( right), http://schoutenenterprises.com/MES_SMJ_archief/MES_Nieuws_Archief.htm ( left) Date: both 2017
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“Oh,” I thought, “oh wow”, it’s the outline of a black figure, yet he’s depicted as golden. He has an earring and a bandana, and he has roughly drawn features, a depiction of foreign man by another group of people. “Is this another Zwart Pete?” I thought to myself. “Who is this man?” Then I look up, and I see another shield, (fig.14) made out of cardboard, hanging on the wall, in worn-out gold and blue paint and its’ another version of this same man’s portrait. I ask the women behind the counter who he is, we both stumble in awkward broken Dutch, English. It was a tense conversation, I could not speak Dutch and they could not speak English. Here a very abrupt realization arose, just 40 minutes by car from Amsterdam and you are no longer greeted with friendly indifference towards English, here English is a foreign language, in Amsterdam it is a second language.
More importantly it was a tense conversation because I had just reversed the role of my behavior with them; before I was a friendly interpreter of their cultural affinity for the Queen of the Netherlands. Now I was a questioning antagonist, asking about a depiction of a man who, later on I would find out, has received some controversy and criticism from the bands of tourists which enter the town.
[Fig.14] Left: Closest image I could find which mimics how the shield I saw, in the museum, looks. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marken_wapen_HRVA.svg
[Fig.15] Traditional Marken interior of Marken Home, this is the water closet with clogs displayed for foreigners to view, although this image is from a house, which depicts the traditional Marken home and interior, in the open-air museum in Arnhem Source: http://detantevantjorven.blogspot.nl/2012/07/het-marker-vissershuisje.html
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I noticed an affective, emotional relationship regarding the types of material heritage we could speak about. There was audible tension about certain material objects. This behavioral interaction left me curious as to the private-public nature of the Markeners. Paradoxically they have their intimate traditional house on display for everyone from around the world to see and at the same time certain objects within that intimate space have a “look-but-don’t-ask” quality to them.
The urban environment mimics this private public tension. As you can see in figure 18 below there is a network of ambiguously public, narrow streets, woven into the hyper public touristic routes. Within these “private-public” routes a toggle of voyeuristic behavior exists today amongst the Markeners, windows with eye catching displays perform a museum like display for the visitor, yet look a little deeper into the open window and you may be met with a hostile face looking back at you. If the built environment is rife in Marken with so many private-public ambiguities, what through Ingold theory of dwelling can I infer about their “Ways of being” as they exist today? The private-public tension in the urban environment has blurry limits. A stoic openness, to each home with a diversity of reactions from the owner of the window inside, yet, mostly, a definite attention-grabbing display. There is almost a flirtatious nature to the Markeners with their touristic visitors; the windows suggest to “look at our traditional home; absorb all the information you can about the beautiful interiors of our homes, look into our contemporary homes, look at what I have put on display, but do not get too close to my home, and do not look deeper than the window.
I was taken aback by Marken the more I spent time there. The inclusive nature of tourism, which drops the spectator into the seemingly most intimate forms of local heritage, in Marken, has a strict boundary. What you see is what you get and to dig deeper into this seemingly transparent, seemingly intimate experience, I would say from my field work, is a taboo. You see homes, you see “Markeners” living in their homes. You see a harbor. You see their history. It is a very voyeuristic experience for the outsider. It is a mysterious place, but also a very slow moving, very quiet place, which is even a boring place, there is something about this mystery which is inaccessible, and you are left with a feeling of boredom.
The mystery on Marken exists but it also does not exist for the locals in the way I perceived it. Any talk like this with some of the locals would make me seem as someone who was looking too deeply into simple things. In a sense the mystery on Marken was a repressive mystery,
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where all you see is the myriad of window displays. The conversations I had on the spot with locals in the café, mimicked this “display” interaction; there was an overt openness to conversation yet, metaphorically speaking, a curtain to close this open window very near to this openness. When any deeper questions about the origins of Marken costumes, or Marken houses arose, merely factual information was replied in a matter of fact way. In this sense I see that the private-public manners of conversation I had with people as a reflection and a connection to the ways in which they live.
During the first month of my field work, some days an eerie feeling of isolation would dawn upon me, “Why am I researching this town?” The further I immersed myself in the urban environment, the more isolated and austere the surroundings of this “quaint and charming town” began to feel. Later on, I found an article from 1887 in which the author encounters the same austere feelings of isolation I felt:
“ ‘A feeling of loneliness and utter desolation came over me: the feeling that takes mastery when one is compelled to come into contact with a people, with whose inclinations and emotions one has nothing in common.’ Indeed, ‘the island seemed to be separated from the world in every sense of the word.’ ” – (Roodenburg, 2002: 186-187)
From my field notes:
“The more the urban environment became alive with connotation the more I saw the same three colors of paint; blue, dark green, black….is anyone alive here? Only, an open window with a white sheet would rustle back in response. There are days that I get the feeling I am being avoided, yet also watched, this I am sure is not just about my presence, but the presence of all foreigners; you can see the dark silhouettes of people in their homes, and you can feel their eyes watch you silently.” ( Anna Miorelli, May 2017)
One day at the edge of the Minnebuurt neighborhood and after looking out across the vista of newly born lambs in spring, I turn around to go back to the bus stop, when I catch one! A Markener! looking right back at me, this time, I make a locked gaze through the window of their home. I caught him, he was watching me watching the town. A middle aged older man in his wooden seat, observing me and two other foreigners, observing the town. The tension of voyeurism in Marken is a volley between local and non-local. The private and public spheres of Marken have a distinct looking glass, a bi-directional portal of intimate exchanges.
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[Fig.15] Left: Henk van der Leedensource, Grietje van Altena and Luutje Schipper behind window:
https://www.henkvanderleeden.com/225213045/marken Date: 1970- 1998, right: Meeting Markener gaze, Here the women pose in traditional costume behind the windows, however in real life, the women and men in their homes were everyday contemporary clothing. Source: Anna Miorelli, June 2017 Right: This is another image of a girl working in the window of a kitchen, whom I guess became confrontational when I was taking photos in the harbor. Source: Anna Miorelli
Yet for the Markener this is somewhat of an elected voyeurism and an imposed defense mechanism to stare back. As the highlight of touristic experience in Marken is to display the interior of their historical homes, it may follow that tourists become used to the blurred line of interior privacy as a public right. Figure 15 depicts my experience with filming in the tourist central harbor where one woman looked back into my camera, almost aggressively while I was filming the facades of homes.
Regarding tourism, I was shocked at how little economic interaction locals have with regards to transporting the tourists. Of course, the; two museums, six touristic souvenir shops, singular hotel, eight Air-BnBs, famous Marken-Volendam ferry service, four snack stands and six restaurants on the island benefit from this influx of tourists. Since only 4% of the community works with tourism, the local population of about 1800 people has very little control over how many people visit the island every day, this is almost entirely outsourced to private touring company’s and the independent usage of the public transportation system.
I wonder if the lack of power in regulating the amount of touristic traffic, has given a sort of watch dog confrontational-shyness to the Marken community. I have observed the tourists being particularly unruly, in the most intimate parts of the community ( the orange lines
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in figure 18 below). I have observed them tearing the leaves off of trees, being very loud, taking
“selfies” on people’s doorsteps. It appears that the Marken people are visually territorial with
their cultural landscape. Yet, I never witnessed outrageous Marken vs. tourist type of altercation, despite the elaborate physical behaviors which tourists performed throughout the material landscape.
However, there were again, these visual altercations, similar to the window experience. For example, if a tourist was taking a “selfie” right outside a local’s house, if the person in the house was home, they would make their presence known in some way. (fig.16 )
[Fig.16] Tourists outside of Markener in his home. He made his presence clear by opening the window and staring out at the people in an awkward fashion.
This activity of voyeuristic enforcement, on the part of the Marken people, may be one acquired way of being, a new community practice, which through Ingold’s concept of dwelling, could be considered an inherent cultural component of identity. However, it is a phenomenon of curiosity for me as an aspiring anthropologist. Considering, the language barrier between tourists and locals, the bodily behavior of a native Markener enforcing an expected behavioral comportment for the tourist, through the bodies’ location in the environment is a curious activity. It is a quiet activity and it let me know something about the quiet possessiveness the Markener feels with his/her home. Where the Markener dances back and forth enforcing that the ambiguously private-public streets, may indeed be public, yet the watchful gaze and bodily presence of the Markener suggests that the streets may indeed be private in a non-legal way.
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Through seeing and being seen privacy is demanded. Rather than privacy being denoted by a language, by a physical fence or a shot gun, it is defined in the urban environment and constructed in the built environment in an ephemeral, non-tangible way.
This is precisely what Ingold speaks of, where a human’s environment is constantly being constructed even when the physical building has already been built. The home and its interior can be constructed at a distance and projected as a boundary which is further than the actual physical limitations of the home. The quiet suggestion of an owner through making his body known, which defines the ambiguous private-public urban architecture of Marken, is a part of the construction of the identity of the Marken in that it is embodied in the physical environment through the activities of the Markener in the environment in his/her everyday “way of being”, with that environment.
[Fig. 17] Map of touristic route from Amsterdam, through Waterland, through Marken and onto Volendam. ( yellow on mainland, red on Marken, Blue where the ferry takes you from Marken to Volendam) Source: Anna Miorelli
It is regionally perceived that Marken is a touristic rest-stop between Amsterdam and the more famous fishing village, Volendam. (fig. 17) Every day this cadence of touristic
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migration peaks and subsides with thick streams of Urdu, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, English, audible, through the tight alleys of wooden horizontal monochrome. It is interesting to note that there is only one entrance into Marken from the parking lot. There could have been many ways to design the entrance to Marken. It is like entering a walled city, only there are no walls. However, there are clearly designated paths which lead you directly from the parking lot entrance to the harbor. There were many options when designing Marken, the original entrance to the city in reality was always the harbor, but today, the entrance is reversed to the harbor of the parking lot. Between the harbor and the parking lot, the main buurtschappen are intersected by the main pathways, as the urban formation of Marken originated from corresponding hamlets (‘buurtschappen’ in Dutch).
Figure 18 below clearly illustrates the clustering of homes (outlined by the orange pathways) and the way in which the paths expand and contract and cluster into very intimate bisections of urban planning. The touristic highlights are mostly home related, with the exception of the clog factory; these are the Marken museum, a traditional “Markener home with a plethora of material culture. The “Stilje Bos” is another Marken home open to public voyeurism and even within the cafes there are mini replicas, made in cloth and cardboard dioramas of the Marken interior design.
[Fig. 18] Map of touristic circulation around the orange private public ambiguous routes, the yellow which signifies the touristic routes and the magenta which signifies the commercial buildings in the harbor neighborhood. Here in faint yellow to the right we see the massive parking lot which then leads to the clog factor, the rectangle yellow square, to the upper left of the parking lot. Source: Anna Miorelli
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Many private homes have their doors open, yet they are shielded by dangling beads, or waist level painted plywood and met by lace hangings to shield the interior of the homes. The tourists rhythmically arrive through these passageways, from 7am till around 14:00 every week between March and October. The narrow streets are technically public, but have a very constricted, intimate, private courtyard ambience. Here is where an encounter with a peering local is possible, if you wander alone. ( Fig.19)
[Fig.19] An example of an ambiguous private public pathway through the historic district of the town. These can be seen in orange in map figure 18.
It was a great unexpected tension, to meet the human gaze, within what had been consistently narrated to me as a “wax museum”, “tourism town”. It is a reminder that Marken is very alive in its Material landscape. What appears to be the quiet un-moving material is imbedded with the visage of the Markener.
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My research revealed private and public displays of emotion in different ethnographic interview situations. Depending on the context of the language being spoken, the mannerisms and degrees of expression would change. After my second month I enlisted the help of a Dutch friend of mine, Emma, to help me speak with people and make contact because gathering informants had become increasingly more difficult. This greatly improved my data collection process. In fact, this was a complete revolution in the amount of information and behavioral treatment I received. Familiar language being exchanged between strangers ultimately enhanced the public display of emotion. When Dutch was spoken, it was like watching a light bulb turn on and the animation in their faces would become cheerful or at least vivid in some way, with some kind of expression. If the Dutch language was not there, then in English there was a kind of autopilot response I would receive. I am aware that this could also be a personality trait; some people are more charismatic then others. However, I observed this public display with language amongst many of the neighbors walking out of their homes. Greeting each other, I saw people stop their bicycles in the street, to chat for a minute or two, and the dialogue, though in Dutch was always a few degrees more audible, than a conversation in English, the faces of these people, (usually women) who stopped their bikes were generally open, with raised eyebrows, their cheek bones raised in a friendly greeting.
While I was in Marken, in a way, I was experiencing severe culture shock. In Marken there is an invisible wall between you and the other and where I am from there, this invisible wall is an openly displayed emotion, whether it is an in-genuine emotion or not. Even if it is an emotion like disgust, or anger or confrontation, something is expressed in the direction of most people, especially if you are in their neighborhood. For example, it’s not uncommon for someone who doesn’t know you at the grocery store in Miami, Florida, to confront you and say, “what are you looking at?” even if you are just turning around for no reason at all. People where I come from assume that others are aware of others and respond openly with emotions; affronting or affirming, comforting or confronting. However, in Marken, it was like other people didn’t exist for the Markener, you could tell who a local was by the way they actively ignored or were indifferent to the surrounding cultural landscape and to the surrounding groups, of what I will call, “outsiders”. These outsiders were easily spotted for a myriad of reasons, but underlying them all, was their active receptiveness to the cultural landscape. Outsiders looking around, or listening to a tour leader, guiding them, or just a general unexplainable alertness in the cadence of their walk.
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The “warmth” I could sense between native Dutch speakers, after having my friend help to translate, was a strange phenomenon to witness and a breath of relate-ability. I could now see, that like most stereotypically small communities in the world, “my ethnographic group of focus is just somewhat clannish,” like my Cuban family members back home. Skeptical and critical of outsiders, possibility due to a specific framework of relate-ability and a specific set of behavioral and verbal cues for intimate exchanges of neighborliness ( see chapter 3, culture-identity analysis). Behaving in a clannish way, as opposed to a sort of stoic coldness, from a self-reflexive point of view, I personally understand the clannish mentally better. In the clannish mentality where I come from even if you dislike someone you are receptive to them, even if it is in-genuine. The “cold” interactions I was witnessing and engaging in before with Markeners were very off putting and deterring, but in a sense, they were genuine. Or so I assumed, because I started to wonder if in the same way, my community of people back home, has an in-genuine openness, towards strangers, no matter how the individual feels about the stranger. Maybe it was possible that the Markeners had an in-genuine coldness. Maybe they didn’t actually feel so cold or indifferent to outsiders. Maybe it was just an act, the same way that being open was an act for my community.
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CHAPTER 2|
the local foreignerIncorporating foreign iconographies in a Marken “way”
Back in the Museum shop when I had made my discovery of the wapen of Marken, I was just in the middle of explaining the orange dress costume to a French tourist when a distinct image of a foreign man had caught my eye. I asked if I could buy one of the wapen stickers. They reluctantly let me take one of the images after I explained my research. I left the Museum and walked to the harbor thinking about my serendipitous luck in congruent research topics. “Oh my God, there he is again”, how had I not seen the wapen of Marken before! It was flying in blue and yellow as a flag in the Harbor, the flags being tangled over some of the harbor buildings and unfurled over others.
“Strange,” I thought, “very strange”. Here is the heraldic seal of the town, yet he is somewhat hidden within the town. There is no statue of him. There are no stories written about him and when you Google “Marken” without typing in “wapen of Marken,” specifically, the image does not appear. The wapen and flag also, do not show up, immediately when you Google search Marken. I notice that I kept referring to this icon as a real man and not an image or an object on a shield. For me the image of this man is alive in some way.
Hence, after the discovery of what appeared to be a foreign man representing a local people, I was awake with curiosity. One reason is because this man was a material emblem which satisfied my initial desire to research question Why/How one group of people uses the image of another to represent themselves. The other reason is for its’ stark contrast in regard to the other regional Wapens of Waterland. Marken is a historic fishing village and has regional performative cultural continuity with the surrounding villages of Waterland and the Zuiderzee in regard to ceremonial marriages, Protestantism, traditional costumes and a rich fishing lore. (Fig.20) Yet their emblem is a foreign man, used to represent a very local Marken, a local place and local people. A people who have been characterized by anthropologists in the past as being an ethnically rich variant of a “authentic” Dutch culture. How and why is the symbol of a Moor being used to represent a people who have no direct or indirect cultural connection to this person? What does the historic and present material presence of this wapen in Marken say about processes of identification of the Markener?
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For me this use of a foreigner tied into a common relationship I saw in the urban environment, the use of the foreign to represent the local traditional Marken heritage. This was evident in this material emblem of the wapen as a flag and ceremonial seal for festivities. It was evident in the use of multiple foreign objects brought home as souvenirs by Marken men and their fishing expeditions’ in the North Sea. As I was told by Eefje my gatekeeper these foreign objects were then arranged within a specific “Marken-way” an aesthetic design of display in the traditional home of the Markener. Finally, it was evident in the use of the foreign tourists as a mirror for which to perform their local heritage in the urban environment of Marken.
With regards to the Moor I perceive him as an “other,” and a “foreigner” in regard to the Marken people. They themselves have described him to me as a legend, a symbol which is owned and as a real person. Yet for categorical purposes I must say that they referenced him to me as “the moor,” or “a moor”.
Again, the historic “ways of being” and ”dwelling,” (Ingold,2000) which constitute the physical architectures and habitat of Marken and the surrounding region; for example, fishing as economic revenue, Protestantism as religious doctrine and then agrarian subsidiary
practices. All of these regional qualities manifested a “traditional” aesthetic of heritage, a symbolic vernacular (see definition in next few paragraphs) is embodied in the symbolic logic of all the regional wapens of the distinct communities of Waterland. This holds true for most of the wapens of the historic Zuiderzee region. These wapens all reflect regional, material, attributes of the landscapes of these places; monks for Monnickendam, swans for Broek and Waterland, horses and cows for Volendam. Urk literally has a fish. Yet Marken, chose a Moor…. Allison Blakeley gives a very solid definition of the Moor and its origins in the Netherlands, see figure 21 below.
[Fig.20 ]: Wapens of regional Zuiderzee Towns. Sources, from Left to right: http://www.ngw.nl/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Marken, http://www.ngw.nl/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Monnickendam, http://www.hugovandermolen.nl/brieven/gemeentewapens.php, http://www.ngw.nl/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Broek_in_Waterland, http://www.ngw.nl/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Urk.
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Usually the aesthetic images of a wapen are used to evoke some kind of union of people and to represent the place and people to outsiders. Yet they are using what I deduce, from my fieldwork, to be an “outsider” to represent themselves.
Here it is important to understand what vernacular means regarding the built environment and the symbolic iconography of Marken. Vernacular is a term which describes the material landscape and the processes of building and creating material objects which use essentialized motifs of a place. This will be expanded upon in Chapter three as it relates to the physical urban environment. However here it is interesting to take this vernacular concept as it relates to the wapen and the wapens symbolic, stylistic forms. Marcel Vellinga (Vellinga, 2011) in “the end of Vernacular,” speaks of the cultural processes which essentialized the identities of people through architectural landscapes. In Marken we see the essentialized vernacular of the aesthetics of an authentic, Dutch fishing culture, preserved to its original state with the “original” aesthetic characteristics which deem it a place of genuine heritage. An example of a traditional Marken material vernacular would be the essentialized folkloric costumes; which were once thought of as “primitive” for their characteristic bright colors and bold patterns (Roodenburg, 2002).
Here it is interesting to note that the symbolic logic of an essentialized fishing village would assumedly be composed of fishing nets and boats and seafaring paraphernalia. Yet when you visit Marken, unlike Monnickendam or Volendam, there barely a net to be seen. I assumed in a essentializing manner that because the town of Marken is so ichnographically representative of what a traditional fishing village looks like, my assumption of the Markener identity was to see them, representing themselves with iconographies that are related to fishing. This clearly shows how the essentialized touristic view of Marken, and the essentialized , “authentic” crystallization of Marken in the imagination of outsiders, has in a way reinforced the homogenous nature of the imagined and assumed vernacular of Marken. There is a dominant emphasis, with regards to material culture, on the costume of Marken and on the interior home of Marken; material cultures I would have never associated with the material culture of a fishing village.
So here the wapen, the Moor, becomes a key periscope into perhaps an under-looked aspect of Marken cultural identity. I was so blinded by my own vernacularized conception of
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Marken as a fishing village that I was for a month and a half passing by this Moor every day; in the harbor, in the café and in the tourist zone, without even noticing it.
In the material urban environment, the historic districts of town are where most of the tourists spend their time in Marken and curiously the Marken wapen only exists on the main avenues where the tourists flock to.[See Map fig.23] I do not have substantial information to prove that the influx of tourists has forced Markeners to claim their symbolic seal again and place it in the paths of foreigners, however it is curious. The mythologies and personal interviews I gathered depict contrasting arguments to a purely touristic usage of the symbol. The interviews are ripe with words that are related to processes of identification, like “it is our symbol”, and “he was a warrior” and “he lived in the tower on the road” but also more distancing qualifications such as “oh, he is a really ugly guy, isn’t he?” These statements give qualitative life to this symbol and argue against the Moor being only a static urban monument or ordinary mascot.
One hypothesis could be that the Markeners are trying to claim their autonomy in face of the regional government, as the Marken Moor was taken out of service in 1991 and brought back in 2014. When it was brought back in 2014 (see http://www.gemeentemarken.nl/ for source of this information) it was also the first time it was commoditized, and you can nowadays purchase Marken Moor cups, pencils, flags and notepads in the tourist office information point or online through personal email. See the “info point” section on the Gemeentemarken.nl website for more information on how to purchase these items.
“ 2016 the flag is 200 years old
In order to investigate this paradox, I interviewed many locals on their own stories and origin myths regarding the origin of this Moor. As an aspiring anthropologist I am particularly interested in the local mythologies surrounding this material symbol in the landscape of Marken. How do these local mythologies relate to this material cultural symbol? This is after all the emblem and representative symbol of the town.
The most fascinating origins for the usage of this wapen and his features and characteristics, deal with a story about him being an “African man”, something like a “pirate” or an “adventurer.” Emma my translator had translated for me from a young woman who was working the café. She was not from Marken, but asked the chef who is from Marken in the back of the restaurant and he said, “that he came with the Vikings, and he was a leader of a tribe.”
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The restaurant has the images of the Moors face imbedded into the window panes of the restaurant.
Another origin myth of this wapen and how it relates to the identity of the town is from these two elderly women in the Kerkbuurt neighborhood of Marken. They were both in Church on a Tuesday reading what looked like psalm books. Around their mid-60s. From my field notes:
“Two older women in church, both reading in different sections of the church, in their late 60s maybe late 70s, kind smiling: light brown hair and grey
shirt/purple shirt with colorful pants, the story is of a moor that had travelled
from Amsterdam, further into the land. He was living in Marken for a while in the “tower?” which supposedly was further into the harbor? (Still do not know which tower they are speaking of) Though they didn’t know much of him, Emma says they used words like, pirate or explorer, or adventurer and he somehow got stuck in Marken. They said they happened to know about this story, but many people wouldn’t know about it, but they don’t know if even “the woman in the VVV tourist office would know about it”. (She didn’t, but as you will see in the next origin story, she was very proud of him and possessive) They suggested the library and the books in the library there. They said he was “from Morocco, a Moor, a black guy, traveling from Amsterdam to Marken. The small canal was safer to travel to Marken from. Safer than going through the Zuiderzee”, and he lived in a tower, “ well the people in the tower don’t know, now they are all people who moved to town later on so ... They made it very clear that most people were not interested in the history of the town, “it’s a topic people are NOT really interested in at all these days...” (Curious cause the symbol was brought back into town in 2014 and now is flying as a flag in a lot of places, but it is also very subtle, you do not notice it unless you are looking for it.) This time I went with Emma through the harbor and I saw the wapen so many more times, than when I visited the island alone, it is there but it is subtle compared to the other Marken flags shown ”(June 2017, Anna Miorelli)
The narratives of the locals sometimes mirrored the written, online sources of information on the origin of the Moor in Marken. The visage of the Moor has been compared to the heraldic seal of Sardinia by many of my interviewees and many of them stated that he may have been a Christ figure or a crusader. The man depicted on the shield wears a bandana
and hoop earrings similar to this shield of Sardinia.
(https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapen_van_Marken) The written and online sources of information are official and institutional and form one way in which information about this symbol of the Moor is to be used as a representation of Marken. The official information online states that he is used to represent the Christian church and the crusader Saint Mauritius.
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(http://schoutenenterprises.com/MarkerNieuws/2016/9701.htm) It is interesting to analyze the official information for the variety of tales described in the local mythologies. From field notes:
“He came with the Vikings, and he was a leader of a tribe.”- Chef at Marken Restaurant (Anna Miorelli, July 2017)
Within the opinion of this local Markener, the Moor is tribal and a member of another European group. In the official record the Moor is a part of a European Christian institution. The image of this Moor perhaps reflects in my opinion a type of autonomy and difference, a “tribal-ness”, similar to that of a roaming group of Vikings, rather than an institutional fighter, a crusader. ( http://www.ngw.nl/heraldrywiki/index.php?title=Marken) It is also interesting to note that the three posed photographs in the introduction, fig.8, come from a contemporary series from 2014, where the photographer was focusing on “tribes” around the Netherlands.
[Fig. 22] Procession and usage of the foreign wapen in the celebration of unveiling historic plaque commemorating the great flood of the 20th
century. The use of a foreign man in material form used in the replication of a historical event. Photo date: 2016. Source:
The quality of life, the Marken people, have historically led, on their island, has been one of foreigners within their own region. Men constantly at sea providing income for their families and women banning together. They remained outside of the regional government from around 1600 till 1991. When they were re-incorporated into the Waterland region again, I suggest that there is a strain on the locals now being incorporated into a regional identity, and perhaps the re-emergence of the Moor, now available in more commodified forms, is a subtle voice to the independence and autonomy the former island once had. The Moor is perhaps also a form of cultural hero.
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Overall the wapen of Marken has a stronger online presence than a public environment presence. It shows up in very intimate community moments, like the unveiling of the commemorative plaque of the great 1900s flood, or at the mid-summers festival. (fig.22) However in the public environment it has a distinct presence now in the largely touristic areas. I have made a map with corresponding photos of the locations where he appears in the public environment of Marken and a photo montage of his presence in the online environment.
[fig.23] The yellow route in the map signals the main touristic artery through the town. The faint blue lines signify the areas where the corresponding Marken Moor can be found in the material culture. The red signified the historic districts of importance within Marken where the architectural environment is restricted to certain governmental regulations. It is curious to see that the Moor shows up only around the touristic routes and not within the private community. Source: Anna Miorelli 2017
In order to ask questions about the aesthetic connection of the Marken wapen with
identity I must first define what I mean by aesthetics. For this research I am concerned with
aesthetics as defined by Wilfried van Damme, in his “Towards an Anthropological approach
for aesthetics”:
“It is clear that to be applicable cross-culturally (not excluding Western society), aesthetics, as an empirical study, can no longer be regarded as
