So far, just two large objects have disappeared from public view. In Amsterdam, the huge coloured Olympic rings have been craftily removed from above the entrance to the city’s 1928 stadium, and a model of a fighter jet, weighing 500 kilos, has been surreptitiously taken from outside a museum near Arnhem.

The police suspect that both incidents are part of the time-honoured tradition of Dutch New Year’s pranks. The prime suspects, however, are not giving anything away: “We’ll just have to wait till New Year’s Day”.

Past glories
In the past, a whole hovertrain was (temporarily) stolen and the wax model of former Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev went missing from the Amsterdam branch of Madame Tussauds. It’s become a tradition: the objects are stolen in December, only to be returned in January.

They mostly turn up in the northern Dutch province of Friesland. Local New Year’s clubs, such as Vesuvius and Free State Folgeren (Frijsteat Folgeren in the Frisian language) – Folgeren is a tiny village – have made a sport of hitting the national headlines with their end-of-year pranks.

Frijsteat Folgeren’s Sietze Jan Hof will “neither confirm nor deny” that his men were behind the theft of Amsterdam’s Olympic rings. “I can only say the objects will be exhibited on 1 January.”

Positive
According to Mr Hof, the tradition dates from the 1950s, when New Year’s Eve celebrations quite often got out of hand, with fights and arson. “The New Year pranks are meant to be positive.”

They mostly represent playful comment about local politics. Last year, for instance, the Vesuvius Club from Elsloo, also in Friesland, removed a statue of Queen Beatrix riding a bicycle. The prank was in protest at the lack of safe cycle paths along a busy local road. It was a success: last summer, work began on the construction of new cycle paths.

Ineke Stroeken, director of the Netherlands VIE institute of popular culture, says it’s an old tradition which “pops up again from time to time”.

“Back in the 19th century, objects were stolen on New Year’s Eve. And, once in a while, a new group of people get it into their heads to go similarly crazy.”

Slovenly
In the old days, whoever was foolish enough to leave his plough, horses’ halter or dogcart outside on 31 December risked finding his belongings in some inconvenient place elsewhere in the village. Ms Stroeken explains:

“The New Year’s ‘removals’ were a kind of popular justice designed to teach slovenly villagers a lesson. You shouldn’t leave equipment outside because then it’ll get rusty.”

The victims of the New Year’s removals generally didn’t have much trouble finding their belongings, but getting them back home proved much harder.

“There are stories of carts which had been lifted onto flat roofs and filled with manure and of ploughs being hung under bridges. It was for the owner to figure out how to rescue his property – and he was not supposed to be given any help.”

Northern pranks
While New Year removals were common throughout the Netherlands, their modern equivalent seems mostly confined to the northern province of Friesland. All the evidence about this year’s pranks also points northwards.

The theft of Amsterdam’s Olympic rings has been reported to the police. The director of the historic stadium, Hans Lubberding, finds the prank “not the slightest bit amusing”. The Arnhem museum’s director Edwin van Brakel is simply amazed that the thieves were able to get away with a model plane, measuring ten metres in length and weighing 500 kilos, without being spotted.

“That’s secret of the New Year’s team,” boasts Mr Hof of Frijsteat Folgeren. “And we always take care that nothing gets broken.”

(mw/tt)