Art

De Vreugdedans

Photo: Frederiek Dilling

Bronze statue of a dancing woman by Kees Verkade, which stood in Rolde's deer park until it was stolen in 2018. It has never been found.

De Vreugdedans (The Dance of Joy), also called De Dansende Dame (The Dancing Lady), is a bronze statue from 1974 by the sculptor Kees Verkade. It was owned by the municipality of Aa en Hunze.

It first stood on the Brink, the village green in Rolde, where it was repeatedly vandalised. In 2007 it moved to the Hertenkamp deer park on Bosrand. In July 2018 it was taken off its plinth there and carried away. The thieves were never found.

The statue Life Lines now stands where it used to be.

Art

Jampie

200 m from de Jacobuskerk in Rolde

Jampie, Jaap Hartman's little boy in clogs Photo: © Rolde.nl - 2026

Statue by Jaap Hartman of a little boy in clogs with a lunch bag, in the middle of Rolde on the spot where the school used to stand.

Jampie stands on the Plein and is a reminder of the schoolchildren of the past, when children went to school on foot and in clogs. The statue is made of concrete and painted grey.

The Drenthe poet Geesje Hoving unveiled it on 3 March 1993, two years after the school in Rolde had celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1991. The unveiling was organised by Jan Mulder, also known as Jampie Mulder. Geesje Hoving read out this poem at the unveiling:

Er gung een jonkie
deur het veld - klompies an
stoettrommeltie op nak
op weg hen school
waor as het zien eerste
woordties leert. Er steet een jonkie
midden in Rol
waor as eerst zien school
hef staon.
Elk die hier veurbij geet
zot zichzelf weer
hen de Rolderschool gaon

Art

Life Lines

300 m

Photo: Rolde.nl - 2024

Oak sculpture by Jeroen Boersma in the Hertenkamp deer park, since 2021 the successor to the bronze statue De Vreugdedans, which was stolen in 2018.

Mayor Anno Wietze Hiemstra unveiled Life Lines on 28 June 2021 in the Hertenkamp deer park in Rolde. De Vreugdedans, the statue by Kees Verkade that stood there before, had disappeared from the Hertenkamp in July 2018. It was owned by the municipality of Aa en Hunze.

The board of Stichting Hertenkamp Rolde felt that something should take its place and asked Jeroen Boersma, a wood artist from the area. At the De Boerhoorn community centre an oak had to make way for the renovation: a pedunculate oak, also known as English oak. Boersma made the sculpture entirely from the wood of that tree, so that the tree stayed in the village in another form. He let the natural growth of the wood decide the lines of the sculpture.