ABSTRACT
Frisian monasticism became important to Scandinavia especially because of Mariengaarde and its northern network of contacts. The first great development of Cistercians from Clairvaux made Klaarkamp between Foswerd and Dokkum their first and most influential abbey in the Frisian lands, a mother abbey and model for several other great and influential abbeys, like the well-protected inland abbey of Bloemkamp near Hartwerd in Westergo in 1191. Monasticism moves on the time-scale of Valdemarian Denmark. Monasticism was at first nothing but monastic property owned by great abbeys abroad and, as such, without roots among the Frisians themselves. The Frisians shared the Steinfeld filiation with the Premonstratensian cathedral canons of Borglum who must also have followed their Bishop Tyge in support of the king, the Emperor and Pope Victor. Among the Frisians as well as among the Scandinavians, urban culture was a foreign and generally unknown phenomenon.
