Help the ice!

VPRO journalist and skating historian Marnix Koolhaas thinks we need to help the ice to grow or we may never see another Elfsteden race, the Volkskrant writes.

‘The number of bridges along the route has increased tenfold since 1909 when the first Elfsteden race was held. If technical developments have made things more difficult why not use technique to solve the problem?’, asks Koolhaas.
We can turn the cycle paths that run parallel to the canals into ice paths to avoid the weak spots and create artificial ice underneath the bridges where the ice is naturally weaker, Koolhaas suggest.
Blasphemy
His ideas have fallen on deaf ears. The Elfsteden association thinks they are nothing short of blasphemy.
The Netherlands is skating mad. It’s geographical position and the lack of any other winter sports explain why skating is so firmly rooted in the Dutch culture. A few nights of frost are usually enough for skating mania to take hold. People cannot wait to be out and about on the ice, taking their lives into their hands. A few frosty nights more and murmurings about an Elfsteden race will start, encouraged by the media.
Vice on ice
‘In the 16th century a number of developments coincided, Koolhaas tells the paper. ‘Iron became cheaper, skates got better and winters were extremely cold.’ The Reformation was a skating culture, he believes. When the Dutch in the north converted to Protestantism they lost their Carnival festival. The ice became a place of vice, the frozen canals jolly meeting places where girls could be courted and gambling took place in defiance of the church.
The Calvinists tried to discourage skating by calling it the devil’s work, a blasphemous flirt with death, Koolhaas explains. And of course, a lot of people fell through the ice and drowned. In the south the religious exhortations were more successful but there people still had their Carnival to blow off steam.
Unwise
The Northerners however, kept to the ice which was also an easy, if dangerous, way of getting from one village to another. In the South the saying went: he who leaves the land for ice is a fool and unwise’.
In Belgian skating on natural ice is still subject to the permission of the mayor.