Christmas season on the island and traditional "oliebollenkraampjes"

A weekend read for those that like languages, history, art, food, recipes, and traditions

Dec 11, 2021

An “oliebollenkraampje” in Zierikzee (photo: Alexander Verbeek)

When people on the island speak about "the city," you shouldn't imagine anything that resembles the city of London or any other metropole. Our city on the island is Zierikzee, the biggest town with some 10,000 inhabitants. More impressive than its size is its 800-year history since it received the official city rights in or around 1219. At times Zierikzee was more important than Amsterdam, and the many monuments remind you of its once impressive past.

I was back for the first time since I left the island for Canada months ago. The terraces and tourists were all gone, and so was the sunny weather. Instead, it was cold, windy, and wet, which gives beautiful reflections of Zierikzee's architecture wherever you walk in its narrow cobblestone streets. The picture shows a girl running through the rain on the empty central square with an empty bandstand in the background and a lonely Christmas tree on the right.

But there is some colorful light in this grey world: one of the traditional oliebollenkraampjes heralds a cozy Christmas season when the square is filled again with happy people gathering around this oliebollenkraampje.

Stop reading here in the unlikely case that you are not interested in oliebollenkraampjes, Dutch language, history, or food. It's the weekend, and I don't feel like writing about climate change or other global challenges. We'll go back to serious content on Monday.

Thanks for staying with me, you oliebollenkraampjeslovers. I wanted to leave you this late evening with only this picture, but I realize I can't burden you with the uncertainty about the meaning of this typical Dutch word. So for that, we have to dive into history again and our language; I hope you will join me.

Plural

Let's start with the last letter of oliebollenkraampjes. The "s" makes it plural like in English, just like you say cars or books.

-je

Next, we look at the last two remaining letters: je. When reading Dutch or trying to make sense of it as a non-Dutch speaker, you will note all those words ending at -je; it's a diminutive form. So now you know that an oliebollenkraampje, is just a small oliebollenkraam. You also see "je" a lot in Dutch since je means you; just so je know.

But, fortunately for the richness of our language, and unfortunately for those trying to learn Dutch, this is only half the story of -je endings, since it doesn't just indicate that it is the small version of something, it often also completely changes the meaning. A meisje is a girl, but she doesn't become a meid when she grows older unless (in older Dutch) she works as a maid. Only when she is still a meisje, will you encourage her by saying 'grote meid' ("big girl!")

“Mannetje op de maan”

Hugo de Vries explained in a quora post that a koop is a purchase, but a koopje is a bargain. It gets even more confusing: man is, as you would expect, a man (that's the easy part). So a mannetje can mean just a small man like I learned as a child about the "mannetje op de maan," the little man on the moon. Not surpisingly, it is often used highly derogatory but with a strange exception: "hij staat zijn mannetje" is an expression of admiration for someone who stands his grounds (hij = he, staat = stands)

Think twice before ever deciding to learn Dutch since you can quickly go wrong. A friend can give you a present and say: I brought a cadeautje for you. Be aware not to say: "thank you for the cadeautje" since you would then indicate that you believe the gift is rather small, use cadeau instead (unless it is really tiny, there is just a small grey zone here)

That brings us to the "p" in oliebollenkraampjes

The reason for this letter is so complicated that I would need at least an entire page to explain. The short version is that we don't just add -je behind a word for the diminutive form. We also have -tje, -etje, -pje, or -kje.

If you got this far and are enthusiastic about learning my language, be aware that the Genootschap Onze Taal ("Our Language Society") explains in a summary that there is not one, but six main rules for creating the right extension for the diminutive form. Then you have to think of the five other groups of exceptions. However, that's not all you need to know; there are also nine categories of special cases.

A “bloem”, Sergels Torg, Stockholm (photo: Alexander Verbeek, 5 May 2016)

Let me illustrate such a special case: a bloem means a flower (like blooming flowers). The diminutive can be bloem-pje, or bloem-etje. It is a special category because both are allowed here. But within this special category this is also a particular case since the meaning can change; bloempje is always a small flower, but bloemetje can be just one small flower or bunch of flowers. So it is as confusing as with mannetje; we use the same word for both the smaller and the bigger versions. When you think about it, this is very efficient, it saves learning a new word, and you can't go wrong.

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Somehow our society functions well under this confusion. It is not like you can legally get away with this. If a judge asks you if you stole money, you can't answer that it was just a little bit of money while you had actually robbed a bank. Not that money matters are easily in our language. A dubbeltje means a coin of ten cents (in the pre-Euro world where I grew up), but in this case, we don't have a bigger version of a "dubbel". We know the word dubbel, which means double, but you can't say that double means the whole ten cents, and a dubbeltje is like less than ten cents. We are a country that lives on trade, and ten cents is for a Dutchman always ten cents, not more, not less. It is a variety of the cadeautje example: "this will cost you only a dubbeltje" sounds like a better koopje (remember, that means bargain) than using either 'ten cents" or even any association with double, which makes it sounds twice as expensive.

Oliebollenkraam

Okay, working back from the end, you now know about the s, the -je, and the p in -pjes. We are left with "oliebollenkraam," and will now have an easy and short paragraph. As you can see in the picture, the last five letters, "kraam," means a booth. That leaves us with "oliebollen," which is the plural of "oliebol"

Plural revisited

Wait, that last line went a bit too fast. Didn't we learn that the plural is an -s at the end, like cars or books? As you will understand by now, there are quite a few rules and some exceptions for plurals. For instance, two jockeys called for two taxi's is correct in Dutch. The "e" before the "y" in jockey makes that you don't need the apostrophe before the "s" like in taxi's. Or have a look at this example: kind means child, the plural is not kinden, kinds or kind's but kinderen. Our kinderen learn this at such a young age that we somehow never realize why we have this exception.

That bings us to "oliebol"

You may recognize the word oil; it is indeed "olie." And even if you don't know a word of Dutch (other than "olie," "kraam" that you just learned and which will be helpful if you ever visit my country in this season, but more on that later), you may have a feeling that "bol" indicates a round shape.

Bol

The Latin noun bulla found its way into English and Dutch languages. It means a "knob" or "round swelling." In Dutch, we have quite a few short words, starting with a "b," followed by a vowel and the letter "l." For example, bal, bel, bil (buttock), and bul are all round-shaped. You will see a similar pattern in English, although I just learned from an interesting article that it is not just the bulla-root that explains all these words. Tracing the other roots would lead us to Indo-European origins and Germanic language influences. However, that is a path I don't want to go right now since I already said I just wanted to post that one picture of the oliebollenkraampje without any further ado.

But I can't let you go without mentioning that a bowler hat is indeed derived from the Latin noun bulla. And the next time you are playing bowling, you can safely share this bulla story with your colleagues (somehow, my limited bowling experience was always on annual work outings, but I heard some people throw bulla with friends too).

Tulip fields on the island (photo: Alexander Verbeek, April 2017)

Tulip bulbs

As typical Dutch as the oliebollenkraam is the tulip bulb, which we call "tulpenbol;" note that both the Dutch "bol" and the English "bulb" (there is a b at the end, but it has an "l-sound" after the "u") are also descendants of the same bulla. And at the risk of Substack censorship, you now will forever listen with much more historical interest to the use of "bollocks;" bulla everywhere. As a last one, before I go to the oliebollen: any visions you may have when you hear Ravel's Bolero should also have a round element since it is a dance in a circular motion.

So what are these oliebollen?

By now, you must have some idea about the purpose of the mysterious oliebollenkraam on that rainy square in Zierikzee. I turn to Wikipedia for the best explanation of what oliebollen are. "Oliebollen are a variety of dumplings made by using an ice cream scoop or two spoons to scoop a certain amount of dough and dropping the dough into a deep fryer filled with hot oil. In this way, a sphere-shaped oliebol emerges. Oliebollen are traditionally eaten on New Year's Eve and at funfairs. In wintertime, they are also sold in the street at mobile stalls."

Aelbert Cuyp, 1667: *Meid* met oliebollen (note the use of “meid”, photo: Dordrechts Museum)

It's an old tradition, but the origins of oliebollen are not entirely clear. Germanic tribes in Belgium and the Netherlands likely ate them at the end of the year. The earliest discovered recipe of oliekoecken ("oil cookies," the direct precursor of the oliebol) came from the 1667 Dutch book De verstandige kock "The sensible cook." In addition, there is a painting by Aelbert Cuyp, made 15 years earlier, of a young woman carrying a pot filled with oliebollen that look remarkably similar to the ones sold by the oliebollenkraampje in Zierikzee.

How to make oliebollen: a Dutch recipe

You can make oliebollen as the Dutch do, a traditional snack enjoyed on New Year's Eve; I found this recipe for you.

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