Europe · The successor kingdoms
Magna Frisia
drawn on the map AD 602–771
Magna Frisia ("Greater Frisia") is the modern scholarly term for the 7th–8th-century Frisian realm that at its peak stretched along the North Sea coast from roughly the Zwin (near modern Bruges) to the Weser. It was a pagan polity centered on trade, with the important emporium of Dorestad.
- Shown on the map
- AD 602–771
- Peak area
- 22k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Magna Frisia ("Greater Frisia") is the modern scholarly term for the 7th–8th-century Frisian realm that at its peak stretched along the North Sea coast from roughly the Zwin (near modern Bruges) to the Weser. It was a pagan polity centered on trade, with the important emporium of Dorestad. The term "kingdom" is somewhat anachronistic; the Frisian rulers are called kings or dukes in Frankish sources.
The best-known Frisian rulers were Aldgisl (fl. 678), who received the exiled Anglo-Saxon bishop Wilfrid and resisted Frankish pressure, and his successor Redbad (Radbod) (d. 719), who fiercely resisted both Frankish expansion and Christianization. Redbad checked the Franks at times but was ultimately pushed back. The decisive Frankish conquest came at the Battle of the Boarn (Battle of the Boorne, 734), where Charles Martel defeated and killed the Frisian leader Poppo (Bubo), after which Frisia west of the Lauwers was incorporated into the Frankish realm and Christianization proceeded.
Note
This entry overlaps substantially with entries 14 and 15; "Magna Frisia" specifically denotes the early independent realm.
Common questions
- What was Magna Frisia?
- Magna Frisia ("Greater Frisia") is the modern scholarly term for the 7th–8th-century Frisian realm that at its peak stretched along the North Sea coast from roughly the Zwin (near modern Bruges) to the Weser. It was a pagan polity centered on trade, with the important emporium of Dorestad.
- When is Magna Frisia shown on the map?
- The border data draws Magna Frisia AD 602–771. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was Magna Frisia?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Magna Frisia covered about 22,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica and the World History Encyclopedia, while flagging entries built on thin or contested evidence — Samo's Empire on a single Fredegar passage, Venice's 697 founding date as legendary, the Pacta conventa as a probable forgery. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Frisian Kingdom en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_Kingdom
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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