Earlier this week my eye fell on something (or so I thought) which made me have an extra look at the subject of the church tower of Vries, about which Farwerck wrote in Nehalennia III-3 (1958).
Vries is a small village in the North of Drenthe, a province in the North of the Netherlands. There is a 12th century Romanesque nowadays Protestant church in the village, dedicated to Saint Boniface. It was enlarged in the 15th century and has been under restauration between 1946 and 1949 according to Wikipedia.
Looking through old newspapers, I noticed that as early as 1938 money was collected for the restauration of the tower. Apparently it took a long time to gather the funds. What is also strange, is that in 1950 newspapers speak of: “serious traces of decay”, which would be extraordinarily fast if the restauration was finished in 1949! Around 2000 there appears to have been another restauration.
According to Wikipedia: “The nave was extensively reconstructed and fitted with Romanesque windows.” So the 15th century extension was made to look more like the Romanesque tower? (Or was the nave restored, but not the tower?) It is the tower that concerns us here most.
What I thought I ran into -but can’t find again- was the announcement of a lecture about the church around 1940. I noticed this because the lecture was not of a familiar name and before the restaurations. It could have been a fundraiser for the restauration, but I would like to find that announcement again to see if it says what the subject of the lecture was.
Be that as it may, the church became somewhat famous because during the restaurations, because remains of children have been found. “Child offerings” has been shouted, but the question was: were these of before of after the Christianisation of the area? It seems that “Kapitein Bellen” was much interested in this finding, but it is neither that subject that concerns us here.
Two of Farwerck’s unpublished writings are about “Vries”. In 1952 he gave a lecture about the church tower of Vries (which was well received) and in 1958 he published a 14 page article about Old Germanic time-reckoning and the church tower of Vries in Nehelennia. It is possible that this is either or both of the unpublished texts. In his lecture Farwerck appears to have said that the church (tower?) has been “expertly restored”.
As you can guess from the title, Farwerck’s concerns is the calculation of time and he thinks to have found that symbolism in the tower.
When you look at the tower, you see it has many little arches. Typically Romanesque arches you may say, but there are also arches that are no windows or sound holes and all the way to the top there are arches on a larger surface.
Farwerck has counted the arches on each side of the tower, compared them to the number of knots and other elements on old Germanic jewelry, numbers in folklore, etc. and concludes that the arches refer to sun- and mooncycles. The tower would have been some sort of calendar and based on a pre Christian, rather than a later way of calculation.
Without referring to Farwerck, somebody else did the same in a 2020 ‘blog’ (1). Just throw that text to a translator to get a bit of a feel of what it is about. I haven’t compared Farwerck’s text to this ‘blog’ entry.
In the next issue of Nehalennia, Frank de Fremery comes with another angle and explains the number symbolism in a more Christian manner. He concludes that:
It therefor appears that the numbers at the tower of Vries can be explained both from medieval christian ideas as from an old Germanic worldview.
Both interpretations are interesting. Certainly quite some effort has been put into the 12th century tower. It would be interesting to find out if Farwerck was the first to shine his light on the subject or if he got the idea from somebody else, like somebody who already lectured about the church in the 1940’ies.
(1) Vries: verborgen geheimen en een onopgelost raadsel by Joke Sterrenkruid