Redbad, a very Dutch King
Standing at the ebb & flow of fortune.
I am always on the lookout for movies available in the Dutch language or that deal with Dutch history. That is where I stumbled on Redbad. Now I consider myself a history buff, and I am particularly attentive to stories about my home country, but I had never heard of Redbad. Frankly, the name sounded like something low-budget and campy, so I started to watch this movie with skepticism, but I was pleasantly surprised. If you are curious, here is the trailer:
Now it’s not historically perfect and some of the scenes drag on a bit too long, but if you like the History Channel’s Vikings or you need another Braveheart fixbefore you go to sleep tonight, then Redbad is pretty darn good. For me, it launched a whole new interest in Frisian history and I started to seek out the story of this folk hero who became a king, but whom I knew so little about. While there isn’t much known about him (I’ll get to why later), Redbad was a real person and yes, that was his name.
The Frisians lived along the edge of the later Roman empire, beyond the Batavian tribes, in…
