Bastiaan Van Dijk describes himself as a reluctant antiquarian, but even when he stays tucked in his study in Leiden he can't resist interrogating the creak and ledger of every millstone around him. "Diarium van de Oude Windmolen" is his attempt to trace what has happened from the peat-cutters of the Sticht and the siegeworks of Leiden to the polder plans of Lely and the turbines at Kinderdijk - how we moved from there, marsh and tidal brine, to here, mapped clay and humming grids. The result is an eye-opening passage through Dutch time and water, from Zaan warehouses to the 1953 storm surge, revealing a low country many of us have never seen with such intimate gears and winds.
For readers who enjoy meticulous history with tangible mechanisms, this is a rewarding, quietly immersive read.
As a portrait of the author, this is fascinating but uneven. The "reluctant antiquarian" persona is vivid when he confesses his compulsions in archives and on towpaths, yet he sometimes recedes behind lists of measurements where a bit more self-interrogation might have sharpened the scenes.
I liked the prickly humor and the way he lets millers and surveyors speak in their own terms. Still, the voice wobbles between intimate diary and institutional report, and that wobble kept me at a measured distance.
I finished this with salt in my throat and the sound of sails in my ears. What a surge of a book.
Van Dijk takes a simple, stubborn question and turns it incandescent: "how we moved from there... to here." He threads peat smoke to turbine hum and lets the reader feel the pull of every sluice-gate decision.
You can hear timber groan, feel ledger pages rasp under his fingertips, and then suddenly you are on the dike as the sky bruises. The reluctant antiquarian becomes a guide who loves the machine and the marsh equally, marrying numbers to wind.
It is a national story and a human one, with Lely's lines, Leiden's siege scars, and the memory of 1953 all speaking at once. The result is humility before water and admiration for the minds that negotiated with it.
I closed the book wanting to climb a mill stair and thank every gear. Astonishing, generous, necessary.
Van Dijk makes the landscape legible: peat scars, dikes, sluices, Zaan warehouses, and the long shadow of 1953 align into a living system that hums with cause and effect.
As a piece of historical craft, this feels careful and somewhat fussy. The diary-like framing and archival quotations lend authority, but the chapter order can feel knotty, with long digressions that slow momentum.
I admired the meticulous footnotes and the way maps are invoked, yet I wished for clearer signposts between Leiden, the Zaan, and the delta works. When the prose tightens, the book sings; when it spreads into inventory, it trudges.
Van Dijk houdt het tempo kalm maar gestuwd; van turfstekers tot turbines volgt hij een helder spoor.
Een nuchtere, goed gearceerde tocht door waterwerken en windmolens.
