Hoorn Unicorns

Hoorn () is a city and municipality in the northwest of the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the largest town and the traditional capital of the region of West Friesland. Hoorn is located on the Markermeer, 20 kilometers (12 mi) east of Alkmaar and 35 kilometers (22 mi) north of Amsterdam. The municipality has just over 73,000 inhabitants and a land area of , making it the third most densely populated municipality in North Holland after Haarlem and Amsterdam. Apart from the city of Hoorn, the municipality includes the villages of Blokker and Zwaag, as well as parts of the hamlets , De Hulk and .

Hoorn is well known in the Netherlands for its rich history. The town acquired city rights in 1357 and flourished during the Dutch Golden Age. In this period, Hoorn developed into a prosperous port city, being home to one of the six chambers of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Towards the end of the eighteenth century, however, it started to become increasingly more difficult for Hoorn to keep competing with nearby Amsterdam. Ultimately, it lost its function as port city and became a regional center of trade, mainly serving the smaller villages of West Friesland. Nowadays, Hoorn is a city with modern residential areas and a historic city center that, due to its proximity to Amsterdam, is sometimes considered to be part of the Randstad metropolitan area. Cape Horn and the Hoorn Islands were both named after this city.

Etymology

The origin of the name Hoorn – in archaic spelling Hoern, Horne or Hoirn(e) – is surrounded in myths. According to old Frisian legends, the name comes from Hornus, a bastard son of King Redbad and brother of Aldgillis II, who presumably founded the city in 719 and named it after himself. A different theory claims that the name was derived from a sign depicting a post horn, which hung from one of the taverns established by brewers from Hamburg in the early fourteenth century.

According to Hadrianus Junius, the name could also be a reference to the city's horn-shaped port. Others believed that the name was derived from , a weed with a hollow stem that grew in the area at the time of the city's establishment. The chronicler rejects this theory, as well as the assertion that the name comes from "Dampterhorn", which was thought to be the only remaining neighborhood of the flooded village of .

One of the earliest mentions of Hoorn is found in a letter which states that in 1303, a merchant from Bruges was imprisoned in West Friesland near a place called "Hornicwed". This phrase – although it is uncertain whether it actually refers to Hoorn – is a compound of the Middle Dutch words , meaning "corner", and , meaning "shallow water". It is likely that the name Hoorn was indeed derived from Middle Dutch , or simply , and that the city was named for its location in a sharp bight of (the former) Lake Flevo.

As a descendant of the reconstructed Proto-Germanic '' *hurnijǭ'', the name Hoorn is a cognate with Danish and Norwegian , Icelandic , Swedish , and West Frisian , which have all preserved the meaning of "corner". In Modern Dutch, however, the word translates to "horn", both in an acoustic and anatomical sense.

History

Early history

In the beginning of the eighth century, the threat of Viking raids led to unrest in the Frisian Kingdom, causing many people to leave their hometowns and settle elsewhere. Following this example, Hornus – a bastard son of Redbad – allegedly moved westward along with his companions and, in 719, built a settlement west of the river Vlie, which he named after himself. This legendary settlement did not exist for long, as it burnt down only a few years later.

In the Late Middle Ages, the site of present-day Hoorn was a swampy area that was not at all suitable for agriculture, as opposed to the more fertile inland. Here, overproduction of dairy products led to the establishment of a marketplace within the domain of Zwaag, where excesses could be traded for other goods. This marketplace was located near a sluice in the river Gouw, which was the most convenient passage into the Zuiderzee for the surrounding villages.

The marketplace attracted many foreign traders, most notably from Hamburg and Bremen, who came to sell their goods (mostly beer) to the local population in return for butter and cheese. This also brought three brothers from Hamburg to the area, who recognized its convenient location and decided to each build an inn near the marketplace to increase the sale of their beers. The construction of these buildings was completed in 1316 and led to the expansion of the settlement, as more merchants from Northern Germany and Denmark now visited the place to trade. As a result, the settlement quickly developed into a village, which was then given the name of Hoorn. The town officially became a city in 1357, when Hoorn was awarded city rights by William V, Count of Holland, after a lump sum payment of 1,550 schilden.

Dutch Golden Age

Hoorn rapidly grew to become a major port city and a prosperous center of trade, which flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, also known as the Dutch Golden Age. It was the seat of the Committed Councils of West Friesland and the Noorderkwartier () from 1573 to 1795, and the seat of the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier from 1589 to 1795, together with Enkhuizen. Furthermore, the city was an important home base for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and the Noordsche Compagnie.

The city's fleet plied the seven seas and returned laden with precious commodities from the East Indies. Exotic spices such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves and mace were sold at vast profits. With their skill in trade and seafaring, sons of Hoorn established the city's name far and wide. In 1619, Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587–1629), controversial for his violent raids in Southeast Asia, "founded" the capital of the Dutch East Indies, which he intended to name New Hoorn at first, though it was later decided that its name would be Batavia (present-day Jakarta). A statue of Coen was placed on the city's central square Roode Steen in 1893. In 1616, the explorer Willem Schouten, together with Jacob Le Maire, braved furious storms as he rounded the southernmost tip of South America. He named it (Cape Horn) in honor of his home town.

Eighteenth century to present

Hoorn's fortunes declined somewhat in the eighteenth century. The prosperous trading port became little more than a sleepy fishing village on the Zuiderzee. Following Napoleonic occupation, there was a period during which the town gradually turned its back on the sea. It developed to become a regional center of trade, mainly serving the smaller villages of West Friesland. Stallholders and shopkeepers devoted themselves to the sale of dairy products and seeds. After the introduction of railways and metalled roads in the late nineteenth century, Hoorn rapidly took its place as a conveniently located and easily accessible hub in the network of towns and villages of North Holland. In 1932, the Afsluitdijk was completed, and Hoorn was no longer a seaport.

The years after World War II saw a period of renewed growth. At the center of a flourishing horticultural region, the city developed a highly varied and dynamic economy. In the 1970s, Hoorn was designated as an "overflow" city () by the Dutch government to relieve pressure on the overcrowded Randstad region. As a consequence, thousands of people swapped their cramped little apartments in Amsterdam for a family house with a garden in one of Hoorn's newly developed residential areas.

Geography

Hoorn is located in the east of the North Holland peninsula, on the northwestern shore of the Markermeer – the second largest freshwater lake of the Netherlands. The city occupies an arc of land in the south of West Friesland at the northernmost end of a small bay named Hoornse Hop. The landscape of Hoorn is mostly flat and the only elevated areas are the dikes on the southern outskirts of the city. The municipality is part of the safety region and the water board .

Climate

Hoorn has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb) strongly influenced by its proximity to the North Sea to the west, with prevailing westerly winds. Both winters and summers are considered mild, although winters can get quite cold, while summers are quite warm occasionally.

Hoorn, as well as most of the North Holland province, lies in USDA hardiness zone 8b. Frosts mainly occur during spells of easterly or northeasterly winds from the inner European continent. Even then, because Hoorn is surrounded on three sides by large bodies of water, nights rarely fall far below .

Summers are moderately warm with a number of hot days every month. The average daily high in August is , and or higher is only measured on 1.8 days per year on average (2009–2018), placing Hoorn in AHS heat zone 2. It is also common to have at least a couple of snowy days each year.

The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute has one of its weather stations located in Berkhout, a village situated west of Hoorn. Climatological data from this station can be found in the table below. The record extremes range from to . The average annual precipitation is .

Districts

The municipality of Hoorn consists of the city of Hoorn (postal codes 1620–1628) and the villages of Zwaag (postal code 1689) and Blokker (postal code 1695), which are further divided into the following districts:

Culture

Architecture

Many of the houses in the historical city center date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in the area north of the harbor. Other notable buildings include:

* Hoofdtoren (1464), the former harbor control tower
* Maria-/Kruittoren (1508), a tower built in late gothic style as part of the city wall
* Oosterpoort (1578), the only remaining city gate
*Waag (1609), weigh house at the junction of Grote Oost and Roode Steen
* Statenlogement (1613), former city hall
* Burgerweeshuis (1620), the former orphanage in the Korte Achterstraat
* Statencollege (1632), which houses the Westfries Museum
* Koepelkerk (1882), a Roman Catholic basilica
* Claes Stapelhof (1682), a hofje

Hoorn has notable modern buildings as well, such as:
* Schouwburg Het Park, a theater and congress center that was opened on 25 June 2004 by Queen Beatrix. The opening was delayed, as the fly tower collapsed in the night of 20 April 2001 due to faulty construction work.

Museums

Notable museums in Hoorn include:
* Westfries Museum
* Museum of the 20th Century

Local government

Municipal council

Municipal executive

As of 16 June 2022, the municipal executive of Hoorn consists of:

Transport

Railways

Hoorn is connected to the Dutch railway network and has two train stations: Hoorn and Hoorn Kersenboogerd. From these stations, it is possible to travel in the directions of Enkhuizen, Alkmaar and Amsterdam. It is also the starting point of the Hoorn–Medemblik heritage railway.

Roads

The A7 motorway, which runs from Zaandam to the German border via the Afsluitdijk, passes along Hoorn. The exit Hoorn North connects to the provincial road N302, also called , which runs from Hoorn to Lelystad via the Houtribdijk.

Notable people

Born

The following is a list of notable people who were born in Hoorn:

Public figures

* Hadrianus Junius (1511–1575), humanist
* Cornelis Cort (ca. 1533 – ca. 1578), engraver
* Rombout Hogerbeets (1561–1625), jurist
* Willem Schouten (ca. 1567–1625), explorer
* Jonas Michaelius (1577 – after 1638), clergyman
* Cornelius Jacobsen May (ca. 1580 – after 1624), explorer
* Willem Bontekoe (1587–1657), explorer
* Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587–1629), colonial administrator
* Jacques Waben