All About Frozen Canals

Part of winter in the Netherlands involves the canals freezing.  Many times, they freeze hard enough so that people can skate on top.  It's a great mode of travel if all the canals are frozen, since sometimes it seems they are more numerous than roads.  (Ok, not really, but close).  This year, the larger canals didn't all freeze, but many of the smaller canals did, along with the ponds.  As soon as the ice was thick enough, hundreds of Dutch people were found outside, skating on the ponds and canals.  Even the littlest of kids were out there, running around on the ice, pushing a wooden chair in front of them for balance.  

This winter, the southern part of the country has been colder and has had more snow.  On a short trip to  Amsterdam, I was able to see many of the frozen canals.

The locks in the canal are surrounded by a nice sheet of ice.  

The canals frozen and covered in snow.  All of the houseboats were frozen in place.

Some birds stand on the frozen canal.

Not all of the canal was frozen solid.  This part regularly had boats pass by, and they broke the ice up into little mini-icebergs.

Every winter, certain Dutch people get more and more excited the colder it gets.  Their hope is that it will get cold enough to hold the Elfstedentocht - a 200 km ice skating circuit that goes over several of the canals in the country.  Of course, you need a pretty cold winter to freeze 200 km of canals - but it has happened several times.   This year it wasn't nearly cold enough for this to happen. (I still thought it was plenty cold, thank you.)  Of course, spending anywhere from 6-13 hours skating on 200 km of canals is hard on the body, and people at the end of the race typically look like this.

This event was made into a competition in 1909, but people were skating far before this on the canals on a similar circuit   In what year, before 1909, was a poem written that mentioned skating on the canals of Friesland?