The ‘Elfstedentocht’ needs to be on the UNESCO World Heritage

Every year when it’s freezing for a couple of days everybody in the Netherlands gets the ‘Elfstedentocht’ fever. The ‘Elfstedentocht’ (Eleven Cities Tour) is a 200-kilometers long tour where people skate along eleven historic Frisian cities. The popularity of the tour is so enormous that even when you’re a member of the ‘Koninklijke vereniging De Friesche Elf Steden’ a drawing of lots every year decides who may start and who may not if the ‘Elfstedentocht’ takes place. In the history there were 15 ‘Elfstedentochten’ and the last one was in 1997. The clip below illustrates the typical Dutch atmosphere which should be protected by the UNESCO World Heritage (unfortunatly, the clip is in Dutch).

Due to the climate in The Netherlands an ‘Elfstedentocht’ is more an exception than a rule so maybe that’s why the tour is so popular among the Dutch. The tour can only take place when the ice thickness of the route is about 15 centimeters because of this it needs to freeze the whole day during two weeks.

The UNESCO World Heritage exists of property with exceptional and universal nature and/or cultural value. At this moment the Netherlands don’t have a cultural value on the list which is a little bit strange because we believe that there are some typical Dutch culture values which are the building blocks of the Dutch society.

For example, this could be ‘Koninginnedag’ (Queensday) but the problem with this is that not everybody in The Netherlands likes the royal house. Therefore, this couldn’t be a cultural value so another option is the ‘Elfstedentocht’ because it’s an old value of the Netherlands (in the history everybody could ice skate and still everybody skates on ice these days when it’s possible). Another advantage that speaks for the ‘Elfstedentocht’ is the sponsoring of the tour. Since the tour was last skated 15 years ago, the sponsorship policy is outdated and everybody tries to cash in on it. By putting the ‘Elfstedentocht’ on the UNESCO list this would be prevented.

Fortunately, there are a lot of famous Dutch people and politicians who supported the ‘Elfstedentocht’ in their own way. For example, Geert Wilders (politician) said that if the tour takes place this year it needs to be a national day like ‘Koninginnedag’. Jort Kelder (tv-star) said that the tour needs to be on the UNESCO World Heritage because of the sponsorship policy (he doesn’t like the sponsoring of UNOX).

In our opinion the ‘Elfstedentocht’ is something unique for The Netherlands. This was for example illustrated by the huge amount of journalists at the last edition of the tour in 1997 and it is really popular in The Netherlands (everybody talks about it). The typical Dutch feeling needs to be preserved for our grandchildren and their grandchildren so that every foreigner knows what the orange color is feeling and standing for.

‘IT GIET OAN!’