Bart Schultz
In an earlier contribution to the Flevolands Geheugen website, I have written about this dike. My mother had told me about the statue of Hans Brinker in Spaarndam. The story was that by putting his finger in a hole in a dike, he had prevented a flooding.
It must have been sometime in 2013 that someone told me that the little boy who did put his finger in the dike was not actually named Hans Brinker. I thought, "What on earth is going on here?", and started a literature search. I spent about four years doing this, because it turned out there were so many different stories.
Searching on websites, in libraries, and in archives yielded a wealth of information, some quite surprising and diverse. Based on this, I eventually discovered, in more or less chronological order, the development of the story that is known worldwide. The story has led to a vast number of books and other forms of information dissemination.
The story, with its various variations, essentially goes like this. A young boy is walking along the Slaperdijk in the evening to bring pancakes to a blind old man. On his way back, he hears water seeping from a sluice gate/dike/split stone. He put his finger in the hole to stop the water. Only the next morning is he discovered, and the hole is finally sealed. He has prevented a catastrophic flooding.
The original story was primarily attributed to the American children's author Mary Mapes Dodge. It appeared in the book Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, first published in 1866. Here, the little boy, whose name was indeed not Hans Brinker, did put his finger in the Slaperdijk. However, I found that virtually the same story had already been published in French by Rébecca Eugénie Rodriguès-Henriques. Under the pseudonym Eugénie Foa, she had published it in 1848 in a book of several of her stories titled Les soirées du vieux chateau. The title of the original story is Le petit éclusier. In the story, she writes that she heard it from a clergyman - c'est monsieur l'abbé qui me l'a appris. This story is based on a hole in the wood of a sluice gate through which water flowed - fissure dans le bois, et à travers cette fissure, l'eau qui coulait.
The story, or variations thereof, has been published in at least thirty languages. Films, videos, DVDs, animations, plays, musical scores, and statues of and about the boy have also been created. Three statues stand in the Netherlands: in Spaarndam, Harlingen, and at the entrance of the miniature village Madurodam. There is also a statue in Holland, Michigan, United States. Here, the boy is called Pieter. Madurodam features a section of a dike with spouts representing water from various holes in the dike, where the goal is to keep as many spouts closed as possible.
There were once Hans Brinker museums in Alkmaar, Schermerhorn, and in Kameleondorp in Terherne, Province of Friesland, but all three are now closed. There is also a Holland cycling route (98 km) that passes the statue in Spaarndam, and another cycling route called the Hans Brinker Spaarndam Tour. In Amsterdam, you could book a Hans Brinker day trip with a shipping company, which concluded with a visit to the statue in Spaarndam with a Hans Brinker liqueur. There is also a Hans Brinker Hotel in Amsterdam.
My search ultimately resulted in an article in the Dutch journal Waterstaatsgeschiedenis – volume 26, no. 1, 2017 – entitled: Het verhaal van Hans Brinker. Was het wel zijn vinger? Was het wel een dijk? and a similar article in English in the journal Water History – Volume 11, no. 3&4, 2019 – entitled: The story of the Dutch boy who prevented a flooding disaster: origin and variations on the theme.
There was a temporary exhibition in the Batavialand Museum in Lelystad showcasing various publications and other artifacts. Several of these were provided by Mr. Hedman Bijlsma, a collector of Hans Brinker publications and artifacts. I really enjoyed it.
A few years after my article was published, an article by Peter van der Krogt appeared in Waterstaatsgeschiedenis – volume 29, no. 1, 2021 – titled De Held van Haarlem gevonden. It contains three older references to more or less the same story, the first of which dates from 1821. So there you have it. The reference to the clergyman had misled me, and so there are even older stories.
A brief hydraulic engineering note in closing. If seepage water flows through a dike, it is essentially impossible to seal the breach on the inside. Water must be raised at the inside to provide counterpressure, or it must be sealed at the water side where the excess pressure originates.
