This is the third volume of a series projected to cover the whole of Europe and beyond, including the Americas and Australasia. The Netherlands can boast a large numbers of whale remains, many still surviving others known only through historical documents. This is not surprising considering the huge fleets of whale ships which sailed from ‘Holland’ to the Arctic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as the numerous cetacean strandings that have occurred on the North Sea coast over the generations. The tradition of whale ships bringing home jawbones and other portions of the whale was revived in modern times and there are bones from the south Atlantic at locations across the country (Ameland, Amsterdam, Groningen, Terschelling etc), that were carried home aboard the Dutch whale factory ship Willem Barendsz in the post war period. Three vertebrae from a Greenland Right whale were found in 1927 at Maasoever on the site of a try works and detailed investigation of some of these early processing sites might yield important information on the old industrial methods. There is a particular tradition in the Netherlands of displaying a jawbone or whale rib on, or in, a public building, though the reason for this is unclear. Possibly it is a reminder of the valuable whaling trade or maybe they were just curiosities to excite public interest. A jaw bone which hangs from the ceiling of the Stadhuis, Haarlem, was taken by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten at Novaya Zemlya in 1595. Another jaw bone was given by him and shown in the Doelen at Enkhuizen, but no longer survives. A rib of the same date, from Linschoten's second attempt to discover the northeast passage, is now in the Zuider Zee museum, Enkhuizen, his home town. These are the oldest actual remains but a stone plaque in the wall of a farmhouse in Friesland depicts a whalebone arch with the date 1574 and the name of the sixteenth century farmer and his wife. There are few cetacean bones displayed in Dutch churches and an impressive sperm whale skull is in the Oude Kerk, Scheveningen, taken from a nearby stranding in 1617.

There were once many hundreds of jaw bones erected as rubbing posts for cattle in the fields. Sometimes these were painted with black and white bands, though it is not known when this practice was adopted. There are more drawings and paintings depicting bones than from most countries, including Pieter Saenredam's painting from 1657, of the Amsterdam, Stadhuis, showing a single jawbone hanging in chains, lost when the building burned down. There is a painting of 1652 by Rembrandt's pupil Paulus Potter, and two, circa 1780, at Groningen, all of which show rubbing posts. In a country of canals and waterways it is not remarkable that jaw bones were used as tethering or towing posts around which the tow rope of boat was passed when being hauled by a horse. None survive but a drawing of one from Zaanstreek, Noord Holland, is illustrated.

In Friesland, for example at Ameland (Nes) there were fences made from scores of cut down jaw bones placed side by side, to form a field or boundary division. These structures have largely decayed though portions have been preserved and some constituent bones brought into museum collections. Again in Friesland jawbone grave markers were common, inscribed and dated like any headstone. They have mostly decayed but a few have been brought indoors inside the local churches and dates have been recorded from 1755–1827.

Across Europe whale shoulder blades were used as inn or shop signs and a few of these survive. Other scapulas have been used as a step down outside the front door of a house, as at Ameland (Nes). In the Museon (Den Haag), is a large vertebra the centrum of which has been hollowed out to create an umbrella stand.

At Doorn (Utrecht) a dovecote built circa 1840 was supported on eight jawbones but, being in a state of decay, they were replaced by timbers at the beginning of the twentieth century. The most amazing confection of whale remains was that erected in 1913 Katendrecht (Rotterdam) for the centenary celebration of independence from French rule. A triumphal arch was made up of four columns of vertebrae each topped with a shoulder blade and the columns linked by ribs and the whole structure decorated with plates of baleen.

The Netherlands riches are enhanced still further by finds of cetacean sub fossils from the Miocene and Pliocene eras many of which have surfaced when digging drainage ditches.

Belgium claims the earliest recorded use in the low countries of the display of whales’ bones in a public building. A shoulder blade and rib, which still survive, at the Stadhuis in Antwerp, were seen by the renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer in 1520. The greater part of the description for Belgium gives a detailed history of the remarkable Oostende whale. This fin whale, some 98 feet long, was stranded at Oostende in 1827 and after dissection and mounting travelled all over Europe, including across the channel to Britain, and subsequently to the USA. After changing hands several times the skeleton was acquired by Balabin, a rich Russian, who gave it to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1856 and it is still preserved in St. Petersburg.

This record of bones for decorative and practical use is a rich resource for anthropologists, folklorists, social historians, museologists and cetacean zoologists. Like the preceding volume this maintains the practice of listing the skeletal remains preserved in major museums and institutions and also those in private hands which otherwise might not reach the attention of researchers. As before there is a wealth of illustrations, location maps, a bibliography, indices of categories, museums and institutions, newspapers, magazines and journals, people and places. Also available (from the author, as above) is Whales’ bones of the British Isles; supplement 2004–10 added to the first volume, amended and corrected as appropriate.