More than forty years later, islanders can still tell tasty stories about the national arrival of Sinterklaas on Terschelling. Supermarket owner Willem Mier – who has also been Saint on Terschelling for forty years – talks about it cheerfully: “The weather was lugubrious, so cold. I remember well that it was clear that Saint Nicholas had taken some courage. Or to stay warm.”
Half of the islanders stayed at home
According to Mier, NTR had made a serious mistake about the turnout for the arrival. “It is already quite busy on Texel, but then even children from Vlieland and Harlingen came over to get some audience for a good picture on television. There were simply too few people on the island. There was no winter tourism here yet, and half of the island stayed at home because of the bad weather. People still get cold when we talk about it.”
Hessel van der Kooij (70), the well-known singer from Terschelling, also remembers that special visit to the island well. His daughter, now 48, was on television and was allowed to visit Sinterklaas.
‘Poor Uncle Willem’
“They asked: what is your name? And she said: Anne van der Kooij, Dorpsstraat 82,” he says laughing. “So Sinterklaas immediately knew where he had to be.” He himself was not bothered by the snow and the freezing cold. “I was sitting in the car, with the heater on. There was hardly anyone on shore, so I could easily look outside.”
Unlike Uncle Willem, who presented the broadcast. “That poor man was sitting in a cold hut on stilts, a kind of drowning house, which they had built especially for the arrival,” he remembers. “He had to wait there until the steamboat arrived.”
Watch the broadcast of the national arrival of Sinterklaas on Terschelling from 1984 here: