Drenthe

Drenthe's identity rests on decisions made five millennia ago. When Funnelbeaker farmers arrived around 3500 BCE—the first agriculturalists in Northern Europe—they chose this elevated sandy plateau because its well-drained soils suited their crops and the glacial boulders left by retreating ice sheets provided ready building material. Their 52 surviving dolmens (hunebedden) cluster along the Hondsrug ridge, exactly where these first settlers established their territory. This founder effect shaped everything that followed.

The same geological features that attracted Neolithic farmers—sandstone ridges, peat bogs, sparse population—later concealed Western Europe's largest onshore oil field at Schoonebeek. Discovered in 1943 during Nazi occupation, villagers sabotaged the wells to hide the deposit's true size. From 1947 to 1996, the field produced 250 million barrels, briefly making this quiet province an energy exporter. When extraction ceased, the nodding donkey pump jacks became heritage symbols rather than industrial infrastructure—a transition from resource extraction to tourism that mirrors ecological succession.

Today Drenthe exhibits source-sink dynamics within the Dutch economy. With a GDP per capita of €37,100—the lowest of any Dutch province—it functions as a population source, exporting young workers to Amsterdam and Utrecht while importing retirees seeking affordable housing and natural landscapes. Yet this peripherality preserves what core regions sacrifice: over half the population still speaks Drents dialect, the peat bogs continue sequestering carbon, and the province maintains the lowest population density in the Netherlands.