The hunebedden is a term used to refer to megalithic grave monuments or dolmens built by the funnel beaker culture in what is now the northern Netherlands. For hundreds if not thousands of years...Show moreThe hunebedden is a term used to refer to megalithic grave monuments or dolmens built by the funnel beaker culture in what is now the northern Netherlands. For hundreds if not thousands of years they were a mysterious phenomenon, sparking the imagination of many people and resulting in folk tales about mythical creatures such as giant or witte wieven (a kind of ghost that appears in folklore, specifically in or around the province of Drenthe) which in these stories would either have built the hunebedden or reside near them. In modern times a new landscape of non-scientific explanations about the hunebedden has formed, mainly within the realm of alien conspiracy theorists or new age spiritual circles. Both these categories of stories, historic and modern, can be considered a kind of mythology; a mythology that is inseparable from the geographical location of the hunebedden and the landscape they inhabit. Jean Kommers has written about the concept of mythical geography, defined as the intertwining of a person’s worldview and knowledge or perception of geographical locations. Kommers frames this as a form of knowledge that is present in non-western cultures as an epistemological phenomenon, but this thesis argues that the phenomenon is also present in the Netherlands, using the hunebedden and spiritual or fringe-scientific ideas about these monuments to illustrate this. This thesis analyses both old and new myths about the hunebedden to compare how mythical geography plays a role in the epistemological landscape of the Netherlands from the middle ages on, analysing how the attitudes towards the hunebedden and their role in the landscape is both similar and different between the stories in these to categories. Attention is paid to two different roles the mythical aspects of the stories play: one in which the hunebedden are created by something superhuman and in which they have a superhuman role themselves, for example as being built by giants or advanced ancient civilizations or as centers for paranormal activity because of present entities such as the witte wieven or energetic phenomena such as ley lines. Another phenomenon emerges where the hunebedden become physical pieces of proof for one’s worldview through these myths. Ultimately both the new and old stories change the way the geographical dimension of the hunebedden is seen and in both cases mythical geography is present.Show less
