Rural Home on a Holland Harbor

For a country as small as the Netherlands, the province of Friesland is about as remote as you can get. Located 80 miles north of Amsterdam, in an agricultural area laced with canals and bordering the Wadden Sea, Friesland is distinct from other Dutch regions for a grab bag of reasons—a high concentration of windmills, a high concentration of speed skaters—but is especially notable for having its own native language, Frisian. Uniquely tuned in to the region’s weather and landscape, Frisian has a multitude of poetic words to distinguish subtle climatic differences: Rûzig means "there is a lot of wind"; koeltsje means "there is a little wind." Krôkje refers to tiny, slow-falling snowflakes, izelje to the rain that falls on a frozen road, creating a thin layer of ice.