North Frisians

The coat of arms of North Frisia and the motto "Lever duad as Slav" (Better dead than slave!). The coat of arms North Frisia is not identical with that of the district of Nordfriesland.
The North Frisian flag has like the coat of arms of North Frisia, the Friisk Gesäts, official status.

North Frisians are, in the wider sense, the inhabitants of the district of Nordfriesland in Schleswig-Holstein. In a narrower sense they are an ethnic sub-group of the Frisians from North Frisia and on Heligoland.

The North Frisians live on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein – from the German-Danish border region in the north to the more southern town of Bredstedt (district of North Friesland). Also the islands Sylt, Föhr, Amrum and Helgoland (district of Pinneberg) and a number of small islands, the “Halligen” are part of the area where North Frisian is being spoken.[1]

This people still uses to some extent the different dialects of the North Frisian language, that belong to the group of Anglo-Frisian languages. This language is specially protected by the Schleswig-Holstein state constitution and by the Friisk Gesäts (German: Friesisch-Gesetz or "Frisian Law").


Around 800 the Frisians migrated into what later became Uthlande in the Duchy of Schleswig. Initially they only settled the offshore islands, but in a second wave of immigration around 1100 also populated the adjacent coastal strip between the rivers Eider and Vidå (German: Wiedau) on the Germano-Danish border.[2]

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