What Volkje Jurrianse Nordstrand looked like

Volkje Jurrianse Nordstrand (1618 - 1703)

If Jan Franz Van Husum is the first direct American ancestor of all who bear the name Van Huss, Van Hoesen, Van Hooser, et al, then one should know the name of his wife, Volkje Jurrianse Nordstrand. Volkje meaning "little falcon", Jurrianse meaning daughter of Jurri (English, George), Nordstrand, the place from which she came.

*[Volkje, pronounced like folkie, my interpretation of this name is little falcon, like the Latin "falco". Others might disagree. "Volk" means people, but "little people" seems stupid to me a a girl's name. One other possiblility is "wolf" from the "Proto-Slavic *vьlkъ, from Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos," and that points us back to falcon, Frisisan "wikel" where the "w" is pronounced like a "v".]

Of course no one knows what Volkje Jurrianse Nordstrand looked like. There are no photographs for she lived  from 1618 until 1703. Nor are there portrait miniatures in gouache, watercolor, or enamel as a copper locket for Volkje was a simple farm girl from Nordstrand. There are no paintings that hung on the wall of she and her husband Jan Franz Van Husum.

Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl earring

But we can still guess.

She was Dutch or Frisian, not likely Danish, though that might not matter. Families formed tribes, tribes became nations, people migrated, inter-married much like they do today. The island of Nordstrand where she lived with her parents and sister was in the Duchy of Schleswig, politically part of Denmark, but only loosely so. It was settled by many who were Dutch, but in the small villages lived the Frisians who had lived in these islands since the time before Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus who would accommodate them and bring its young men in Roman armies. It is also quite likely that the Frisians were indistinguishable from the Angles and Saxons who invaded England from the fall of the Roman empire until the seventh century. That we know from the linguistic similarity of the Frisian language and Old English.

Blonde hair or brown, blue eyes or brown, probably both types existed within the general population. Tall, medium, or short, thin or stout, anything is possible, so let us look to the old masters for help.

The Milkmaid by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, painted around 1658 when Volkje would have been 40 years old. By this time, Volkje and Jan had left Amsterdam where they lived after the flood of 1634 and sailed to New Holland and settled along the Hudson River in an estate belonging to Van Rensselaer family.

Volkje and her husband Jan learned the bakery trade, so here is a modern interpretation of a young girl and her pancakes.

To add a contemporary image to the mix, I will show you the photograph of the author, poet and linguist Albertina Soepboer.

Albertina Soepboer, copyright hers

Perhaps you will want to check Albertina Soepboer out. Image and poem are hers.


Now let us Visit a Farmhouse, courtesy of Peter Brueghal the younger, circa 1610. A peasant woman is halfway through breast feeding her young before a caldron of boiling beets, in the background the milk is churned into butter.

Lastly, I will leave you with my favorite, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutch, Meisje met de parel) circa 1665.