Uddel – Uddelermeer

The Uddelermeer is not an ordinary lake but a geological remnant from the last ice age. It is a so-called pingo ruin, a collapsed ice mound. Next to the lake is the Huneschans, a medieval ring rampart. The lake and the castle have been an exciting combination for centuries. Pingo The origin of the Uddelermeer […]

The Uddelermeer is not an ordinary lake but a geological remnant from the last ice age. It is a so-called pingo ruin, a collapsed ice mound. Next to the lake is the Huneschans, a medieval ring rampart. The lake and the castle have been an exciting combination for centuries.

Pingo

The origin of the Uddelermeer lies in the last ice age, about 15,000-20,000 years ago. A huge ice bump formed in the ground that kept getting bigger. The ice pushed the ground up like a pimple. ‘Pingo’ is a word from the Eskimo language and means ‘little hill’. When the ice melted, the hill collapsed, leaving an annular crater, a pingo ruin . The cavity in the bottom then slowly filled with deposits. For geologists and archaeologists, such soil can be read like an exciting book, because it contains information about thousands of years of climate, vegetation and habitation.

Huneschans

The Uddelermeer turned out to be an attractive living environment for prehistoric people, because many traces of the Funnel Beaker culture have been found around the lake. The farmers there grew one of the earliest cultivated types of wheat called einkorn and emmer wheat in small fields around their houses. Right next to the lake you can still see an immense earthen fortification (ringwalburg) from the Middle Ages. This Huneschans was strategically located at a crossroads of routes. The canals were fed by water from the Uddelermeer.

Donar

A Gelderland legend about the origins of the Huneschans tells the story of the time when giants still lived on the Veluwe. The giant of Uddel was startled awake one night by a violent clap of thunder, followed by a terrible cracking noise. Donar, the god of thunder and the worst enemy of the giants, rode past with a deafening noise and shattered the giant’s bread oven with one sledgehammer blow. What remained was the edge of the oven, which we can still see today as the Huneschans.

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