Friesland

Friesland is a realm to the north-west of the continent.

Geography
Friesland is divided into roughly four different biomes.

To the south, you will find a large boreal forest which stretches from the mountains in the east to the frozen marshes nearer the sea. As you continue due north, the forest gives way to a more sparsely wooded taiga where winters are longer and colder than the southern part of the forest. Continue further and you reach the next main biome.

Central Friesland is dominated by a very large swath of uninhabitable tundra where very few things can survive. It is for the most part flat, with the exception of a few lonely hills. Further west you will find the great bay which is the destination of all trade in Friesland. Temperatures here are generally warmer than in the center of the tundra due to a warm wind flowing up from the south along the coastline. To the west and north of the central tundra, you find the third of the main biomes.

The east is littered with high ground too small to be mountains, yet too big to be hills. Nonetheless, the area is known as the eastern hills, bordering very close to the mountains separating Friesland from Aesgeir. Due to their being in the rain shadow of the mountains, the hills receive far less snow than the Asgeirian side. Temperatures are still incredibly cold, especially at high altitudes, but with less snow and steaming hot springs, life in the hills is bearable. To the south of the hills, you can find the taiga of the southern forests. To the west, the central tundra, and to the north, our fourth major biome.

The last major biome of Friesland is the least hospitable. To the extreme north, a skinny and long peninsula extends west of the Icelands and continues almost even further north than the liveable areas of the Icelands. It is home to one of the (supposedly) natural wonders of the known world; the Wave Canyon. Two colossal waves seem to have risen out of the sea in an attempt to swallow the narrow strip of land whole, but they must have been frozen in place. Curiously, there seem to be what must have been living beings frozen in the waves; but the ice is too blurry in most places and no pick has yet scratched it.

Demographics
The Friesisch Folk can be divided into four main demographic groups. The Grell, the Caomhnoir, the Skogen Tribes and the City Folk. Each have their own distinct cultures, although oftentimes foreigners stereotype all Friesians as the Skogen Tribes or Grell.

Each of these peoples have their own cultures and history, thus to get a better idea of them, it would be best to read their separate pages.

Friesland is unevenly divided between these people. Much of the bay area is held by the City Lords and generally is known as the "Cityholds." The City Folk are one of the largest demographics of Friesland, roughly even to that of the Skogen Tribes.

Most of the southern forests and all of the western marshes are held by the Skogen Tribes. The Skogen are probably the largest demographic of Friesland.

The hills and mountains to the east are Grell land; no cartographer has ever set foot there, and thus little is known of the Grell Hills, except that the Grell call them the Hjaertat, or Heartlands. No one knows how many Grell there are; but considering the unexplained obliteration of three quarters of their population when the first men entered the continent and their defeat at the hands of the Varan, most historians agree that their numbers are considerably small.

To the far north, the Caomhnoir live in their single settlement in front of the entrance to the Wave Canyon. They are the smallest demographic of Friesland, but they've managed to avoid destruction by and assimilation into other cultures by living where others cannot and maintaining neutral/no relations with any others.

It is also important to note that there used to be a fifth demographic group in Friesland. The Fischer Folk were completely wiped out and destroyed during the Rise of the Cities. Almost all of them were killed in the massive uprising, although traces of the older race still lie in some of the City Folk though. Their people are nonetheless classified as extinct.

General History
This section contains a general history of Friesland. For a more specific timeline of each group which inhabits it, refer to their separate pages.

The Era of Tel Gren (The Era of Those Who Came Before)
This is a time during the history of Friesland which is shrouded in mystery, myths and legends. Were it not for the Grell and the Caomhnoir, perhaps mankind may have never known of its existence. But ancient drawings and scriptures found in old abandoned Grell settlements and tombs throughout Friesland and Asgeir have told us of a time when the gods supposedly walked the earth and shaped the land. Many famous works of art and literature such as the Tales of Dagren or the Grelliad are based off of tales from these times. Whether or not it is true that this was the time of the gods is contestable.

While in most of Friesland, the next Era is the Dawn of Man, it is important to note that the Grell separate another Era between the Dawn of Man and the Era of Tel Gren. They call it the Dawn of the Grell, the days when the Grell existed as the servants of the gods, learning how to take care of the world and rule it rightly for the days when the gods ascended to the stars. Nobody knows much else about how the Grell see history. It is only through ancient texts and Tai Gren the Traitor that any inside knowledge of the Grell is known.

The Dawn of Man
This is the age in which men finally arrived in Friesland. Where they came from is yet unknown. Some say they emigrated from the Icelands along with the Varan only to later branch off from the main group, provided that theory is even correct. According to the Grell, the humans arrived from the south, not by the mountains.

Either way, not much is known about where the humans came from aside from them being immigrants rather than assimilating themselves there.

And that they had something to do with the disappearance of most of the Grell. Nobody knows why or how it happened, but on the day the first man set foot on the main continent, all of the Grell outside of the Heartlands simply ceased to exist. To this date, nobody knows why. But luckily it did, or the Grell would've been organized enough to destroy the humans. As it was, it took them years to muster an army to take back Aesgeir, and even then, they failed due to lack of numbers.

The first humans to inhabit Friesland were the Skogen tribes. They did not travel very far north, finding the trees of the southern forest to be far more hospitable than the tundra found further north. Thus they settled there.

Some of the Skogen were brave enough to dare live in the tundra by the bay, and these people became known as the Fischer Folk, establishing themselves in low built towns and longhouses on the bay.

A few of the Fischer Folk dared journey even farther north, where they intermingled with Grell desperate to carry on their family lines. These folk became the passive and neutral Caomhnoir.