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Marrum/Westernijkerk (The Netherlands)

Ferwerderadiel municipality, Fryslân province

by Jarig Bakker, 24 Aug 2003
adopted 25 Nov 1999; Design: J.C. Terluin.

Marrum/Westernijkerk twin-village
Marrum/Westernijkerk CoA

See also:

Marrum/Westernijkerk twin-village

Marrum/Westernijkerk is a twin village in Ferwerderadiel municipality, Fryslân.
CoA: in gold a cat and a rook, both black and turned; the first sitting and the second standing on a green embattled base; the cat's tail in the green base; a blue chief charged with three silver six-pointed stars.
Flag: two equally wide horizontal stripes of blue and green; over all a yellow lying lozenge, touching all sides of the flag, charged with black eradicated heads of a cat and a rook, facing each other.
In both villages were "stinzen" (stately fortified houses), where several noble families lived. In Marrum was Ponga-state, where the families Ponga, Wynia, Walta, and Van Idzinga resided. The arms of these families were mainly blue with silver and gold.
In Nijkerk (not to be confused with (Ooster)Nijkerk in Dongeradeel and the municipality of Nijkerk in Gelderland province) the Jeppema's lived. They had arms with the imperial eagle in black on gold with a blue heartshield charged with a silver six-pointed star. After them the families Gerbranda and Unema, and finally the Grovestins lived there.
The Grovestins family were very important in Fryslân; they had arms with the Frisian half eagle, black on gold, in blue three six-pointed stars of gold, placed per pale. The glory of these families is long forgotten, there only remain a tombstone, a name, a fragment of a ditch, an inscription, as Hendrik Algra wrote in "De Historie gaat door het eigen dorp", part V, p.88.
This was a reason for including colors and elements of theit arms on the village CoA and flag.
Another item was irresistable to use: the village nicknames: The Marrumers are "katten" (cats) and the Nijtsjerksters "roeken" (rooks). <rooks were an indication of a garbage disposal dump; cats signified fierce women; another nickname for the Marrumers was "gibben", wild pigeons, spike-like fishes; they are also long skinny girls, which seem to have been abundant in Marrum>
In the village CoA we see both animals facing each other, not in order to indicate a contrast, but to emphasize that they belong to each other.
The colors gold and black are derived from the doubleheaded eagle and the Frisian semi-eagle in the arms of the noble families. Furthermore black is the proper color of both animals.
The green embattled base signifies that remnants of both fortified houses are only the ground on which they were built, and that it is used for agricultural purposes. Green is the color of meadows and arable land.
The blue chief is for the sea, and of the cl