3-082-130 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Winter Sunday in the Island of Marken, Zuider Zee, 1895. 'Skating is part of the business of winter in Holland, as well as a healthful pastime. In many districts at this season it becomes the easiest and quickest mode of travelling from the villages and farmhouses to the market-towns...The skates used have very long runners, and points curving back at the toes...A party of skaters will join together, holding a long pole under their arms...The shores and isles of the Zuider Zee, indeed, exhibit much that is curiously old-fashioned in the manners and habits of the people...The holiday dress of the men is a tight jacket, of maroon colour, with silver buttons, which is slashed in front to show the gay red or blue shirt, huge baggy trousers, boots, and furred cap; while their wives and daughters or sisters, in white muslin caps with long pendants, golden plates or golden spiral ornaments at the sides of the forehead, and frocks of thick woollen striped black and blue, make an equal show of the taste of the good old times...This small isolated community is thought to be the remnant of a peculiar race, more ancient than the Hollanders of the mainland'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.