Whatsit Wednesday: Klompen

Often, when people think of or talk about Holland, they think of tulips and wooden shoes. Perhaps in the same way that when people think of the United States they think of cowboy hats, boots and big cars or hamburgers. Every country has some sort of stereotype. 

But stereotypes usually have some basis in fact and there are indeed tulips in the Netherlands and the Dutch do have a historical and modern link to wooden shoes. In Dutch the wooden shoes are called ‘klompen’. These days you are only likely to find klompen in the tourist shops in the tourist cities - sold to tourists. But that is not how it began and not necessarily how it stands. 

The klomp (single tense of the plural ‘klompen’) is actually a very practical tool. These days people elsewhere might wear crocs or steel-toed shoes, but the klomp was the forerunner of these practical shoes. A good piece of wood keeps your toes safe in dangerous work conditions, so klompen were used by Dutch workers in some situations. But they are also easy to clean and cannot easily be pierced by such things as a thorn or stones. So Gardners and farmers wore them as well. 

As a matter of fact, there are still plenty of gardeners and farmers who wear them. They sometimes wear a sort of leather sock, so that the klomp doesn’t shift too easily. But such a shoe is still quite handy. I have seen street layers wear them as they put down the ‘kinderkoppen’ (more about that here). 

So if you visit The Netherlands (or Holland as a tourist might call it) and purchase some nice wooden shoes, remember that they are still very much a practical, useful style of footwear. And if you are interested in tulips, you can read more about that here.  We will save windmills for another day.