North Sea Water in My Veins: The Pre-Christian Spirituality of The Low Countries

by Imelda Almqvist

North Sea Water in My Veins is a quest for the reconstruction of an indigenous or native spirituality of the Low Countries and covers pre-Christian material from the Netherlands, Belgium and the region just across the German border. Seeking out and documenting ancient gods and goddesses, practices and traditions, this book asks the is there enough material for such a reconstruction? The conclusion is a resounding yes!

368 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2022

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know editors cost money but that is no excuse to skip hiring one. To be Dutch about it: het was hier zeker geen overbodige luxe geweest. As a freelance writer I kept getting distracted (and annoyed) by the shocking amount of typos, double spaces, lacking spaces, dubious sentence constructions and other linguistic crimes. There is also a lot of repetition throughout the book and some parts are structured so badly that they read like a random collection of “facts” mashed together.

Aside from the language mistakes there’s also a lot of factual inaccuracies, some of which so bad that it made me question everything else in the book too. To name an example, on page 153 the author claims Meppel is located in “the province of Twente”. Twente is not a province. It is a region in Overijssel. Meppel is located in the province of Drenthe. A page later the author apparently does remember her grade school topography and claims Twente is in Overijssel, but also that it is known for its hunebedden. Again, no. That would be Drenthe. I know Drenthe and Twente sounds very similar but if you’re writing a book about local legends and folklore then you really should make sure you can tell them apart. I’ll admit that I know approximately nothing about West-Friesland, the region the author is from, so I can see why someone from there might not know anything about the east of the country, but the difference between us is that I never attempted to write a book about it.

Another issue I have with this book is the dubious quality of the sources used. The footnotes are full of random blogs, Wikipedia and even Quora. Ehm. What. These are fine for finding stuff you want to look further into, but not as something to just immediately roll with. The author used some decent sources that I personally also like (Abe de Verteller, whose work is based on much better sources, also Linda Wormhoudt whose work I hear good things about but haven’t read myself yet) but then refers to them constantly. There are way more good actual books than those by the few authors mentioned here. I’d gladly send a list to the author of this book. I understand she’s been away from the Netherlands for ages and therefore might not really know who’s currently doing interesting work in the spiritual field but surely she knows someone in the Netherlands who could’ve pointed her towards them. Naomi Mirkrida, for example, would have been very interesting to talk to about uitzitten (yes, sitting out does have a word in Dutch, unlike what page 286 claims).

I was so excited to find this book and had high expectations of it, which makes me all the more disappointed. These were 30€ and several hours of my life that I’m never getting back.

[Lisa Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book, felt very personal to me. Lots of new information, didn't finish it quickly because there are some parts of it that are not so easy to read. Some parts benefit on re reading but that is totally fine

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of history and background as well as mythology. It was a very interesting read and not quite what I was expecting. Kind of interested to learn a bit more about shamanism now.

[Heidi’s Zee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Goede opzet, maar de opbouw bronnen en spelling is om te huilen