“In years long gone, too many for the almanac to tell of, or for clocks and watches to measure, millions of good fairies came down from the sun and went into the earth. There, they changed themselves into roots and leaves, and became trees. There were many kinds of these, as they covered the earth, but the pine and birch, ash and oak, were the chief ones that made Holland.”
So begins the “Legend of the Wooden Shoe,” written by William Elliot Griffis in Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks, published in 1918. A place where I can indeed imagine that the trees are made from fairies is the Veluwe region of the Netherlands, with its undulating heather-carpeted heathland, misty forests, and moss- and fungi-covered rocks.
The Veluwe, in the Dutch province of Gelderland, is geomorphologically a push moraine, a hilly formation at the tail end of a glacier’s moving bulk. It also has clues from ancient human history. Evidence of experimentation with copper around 3000-2000 BC has been found in the region, as well as Celtic barrows (ancient burial mounds), fields, and kilns. Archaeologists estimate that tens of thousands of people lived in the Veluwe during the Iron Age, from 700-50 BC.
Heritage Quest is a citizen science project, a joint venture by Gelderland Heritage and Leiden University, mapping the archaeological sites in the Veluwe. Between 2019 and 2020, over 2,000 members of the public participated online to identify and mark potential sites on almost 400,000 LiDAR maps. LiDAR–which stands for Light Detection and Ranging–is a remote sensing technology whereby laser sensors flown in aircraft send down light pulses that are reflected back by the ground. The resulting elevation data is used to make maps that model the surface of the earth, unobstructed by trees or other vegetation.
In the second phase of the project, which started in 2022, teams made up of both experts and volunteers are now “ground-truthing.” They are going out into the field to test the accuracy of the citizen scientist-labeled maps by digging small test pits to confirm the locations of burial mounds. The hope is that the process of identifying new archaeological sites can become more automated through machine learning.
I’ve been thinking about ground-truthing, validation through physical contact, and the importance of being present. Experiences of place can rouse other, more personal truths and spiritual understandings. It is only after being in the Veluwe myself that I feel open to the narrative of the children’s story, to believing that the roots and the leaves are made from fairies from the sun. If these ground-truthers are discovering the millennia-long resting places of Celts, some of the barrows may entomb druids–those divining religious leaders with esoteric knowledge of the natural and supernatural worlds–and perhaps there are more truths in the ground than they are looking for.
