**Free Frisia** or **Frisian Freedom** (or **Friesische Freiheit** or
**Fryske frijheid**) refers to a period where the state and feudalism
were absent from a significant portion of Frisia (Now claimed by the
[Nederlands](Kingdom_of_the_Nederlands "wikilink")) from [993 to the
early 1500s](Timeline_of_Libertarian_Socialism "wikilink"). Society was
run via a [confederation](confederation "wikilink") of democratic towns,
villages and farming communities, allowing a sort of semi
[proto-libertarian socialism](Libertarian_Socialism "wikilink") to be
[experimented](List_of_Libertarian_Socialist_Societies "wikilink") with
in Medieval Europe.

## Decision-Making

Friesland had no Knighthood or Ridderschap. In Friesland, the feudal
idea of nobility, which gave the right of control in the country, was
deemed incompatible with the "Frisian freedom". The region also had no
forced labour. Some "nobles" still had a major influence in the region
due to their great land ownership. The right to vote in local matters
was based on the ownership of land, in which a person owning one unit of
land received the right to have one vote. This meant that men owning
large areas of land could cast more votes. Voting men used their
influence to choose a mayor from one of the thirty municipalities, who
in turn represented all of Friesland. Each city had eleven votes.\[1\]

## Environmental Protection

According to [Peter Gelderloos](Peter_Gelderloos "wikilink"), the
decentralized nature of Frisia at the time allowed it to practice some
of the most advanced engineering and environmental protection
experiments in the world at the time:

> Water management in that lowland northern country in the
> 12<sup>th</sup> and 13<sup>th</sup> centuries provides another example
> of bottom-up solutions to environmental problems. Since much of the
> Netherlands is below sea level and nearly all of it is in danger of
> flooding, farmers had to work constantly to maintain and improve the
> water management system. The protections against flooding were a
> [common infrastructure that benefited everybody](Commons "wikilink"),
> yet they also required everyone to invest in the good of the
> collective to maintain them: an individual farmer stood to gain by
> shirking water management duties, but the entire society would lose if
> there were a flood. This example is especially significant because
> Dutch society lacked the anarchistic values common in indigenous
> societies. The area had long been converted to
> [Christianity](Christianity "wikilink") and indoctrinated in its
> [ecocidal](Ecocide "wikilink"),
> [hierarchical](Social_Hierarchy "wikilink") values; for hundreds of
> years it had been under the control of a state, though the empire had
> fallen apart and in the 12<sup>th</sup> and 13<sup>th</sup> centuries
> the Netherlands were effectively stateless. Central authority in the
> form of church officials, feudal lords, and [guilds](Guild "wikilink")
> remained strong in Holland and Zeeland, where
> [capitalism](capitalism "wikilink") would eventually originate, but in
> northern regions such as Friesland society was largely decentralized
> and horizontal.

> At that time, contact between towns dozens of miles apart — several
> days’ travel — could be more challenging than global communication in
> the present day. Despite this difficulty, farming communities, towns,
> and villages managed to build and maintain extensive infrastructure to
> reclaim land from the sea and protect against flooding amid
> fluctuating sea levels. [Neighborhood
> councils](Democratic_Assembly "wikilink"), by organizing cooperative
> work bands or dividing duties between communities, built and
> maintained the dykes, canals, sluices, and drainage systems necessary
> to protect the entire society; it was “a joint approach from the
> bottom-up, from the local communities, that found their protection
> through organizing themselves in such a way.” Spontaneous horizontal
> organizing even played a major role in the feudal areas such as
> Holland and Zeeland, and it is doubtful that the weak authorities who
> did exist in those parts could have managed the necessary water works
> by themselves, given their limited power. Though the authorities
> always take credit for the creativity of the masses, spontaneous
> self-organization persists even in the shadow of the state.\[2\]

## Decline

The decline and end of Free Frisia was rooted in foreign nobles
asserting their own power and retaking territory. The region was
surrounded by hostile feudal communities from all sides and could not
withstand hundreds of years of constant attack.\[3\]

## References

<references />

1.  [Wikipedia](Wikipedia "wikilink") -
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_freedom#Content>
2.  [Peter Gelderloos](Peter_Gelderloos "wikilink") (2010) [Anarchy
    Works](Anarchy_Works "wikilink")
3.  [Wikipedia](Wikipedia "wikilink") -
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_freedom#End>