For seven years I lived in the north-east of the Netherlands, in the provinces of Groningen and Drente. The area where all the 54 still existing Dutch ‘hunebedden’ can be found. I revisited some this spring. A ‘hunebed’ or dolmen is a kind of cairn or cromlech. They were built and part of a northern megalithic culture some 5.500 years ago. It is said these dolmen, once covered with earth, were burial chambers. Maybe I’ll still find a potsherd or a bead.
The mysterious collection of boulders plays its own timeless role. ‘There's a crack in everything, that's where the light comes in....’. The light arrives from thousands of years back between these huge ‘hunebed’ stones. I crawl inside, under the covering stones and lying on the soft slightly damp earth I connect with the powerful energies of the place. And for a little while, which could be an eternity, I breathe with the ones buried deep under here. Sometimes I come with a question, sometimes I come with a gift; but always I leave enriched.
Zeegse/Tynaarlo, Drente, the Netherlands. © Adriana Sjan Bijman
