A summer’s farewell to Frisland

Frisland – click any image for full size

The time has finally come to bid farewell Frisland’s golden reign…

We have shared two amazing years since opening Frisland back in March 2014, and have been blessed with so many precious moments shared with all of you, which we shall carry with us as treasured and priceless memories in our hearts and minds.

So reads, in part, a note from Charlie Namiboo, Anna (Annabell Barzane) and Frislanda Ferraris announcing the forthcoming closure of their photogenic and popular region, Frisland.

Frisland

I first visited the island on March 23rd, 2014, shortly before its public opening. An invitation had been extended to me to do so by Charlie, something I was more than happy to accept. And like many who have visited the region, I instantly fell in love with it – and with the fact the over the intervening two years, other than marking the passing of the seasons in the northern hemisphere, it has changed little over time, presenting itself as a familiar and welcoming place with each visit.

The region came into being as a result of happenstance. . “A few weeks ago,” Charlie explained back when the region was about to open for the first time, “Frislanda did a search on Google about the origin of his name and found an article about a phantom island called “Frisland” in the North Atlantic. He just asked us what we would think of creating a region in Second Life based upon the idea of that phantom island.  We were all for it! And so we started the project with the working title Frisland’s rebirth …”

Frisland

As I noted at the time, the “original” Frisland first started to appear on maps of the North Atlantic from about the 1550s, and continued to do so for at least the next 100 years, although its position was prone to movement, travelling as it did from south of Iceland to close to the British Isles then back across the Atlantic, where it was imagined as a southern spur of Greenland, separated from the rest by an ocean strait.

How it came to be on maps in the first place is a mystery – although one romantic notion had it as a last remnant of Atlantis. However, for Fris, Charlie and Ana, it offered the opportunity to present a part of the island as it might look today, sitting in the Atlantic and quietly settled.

Frisland

The result – as noted – has been a beautifully imagined and much photographed and loved region, one that will be missed when it finally follows its namesake and vanishes from maps. However, there is still time to visit, either for the first time, or to say a fond farewell. The region will remain open until Saturday, June 4th. And then? Well, as Ana, Fris and Charlie remind us, “when one door closes, another one opens … who knows what fabulous adventure will be coming next!”

I hope to get back to Frisland before it closes and film there. However, just in case time conspires against me, here’s a video I made back in December 2014. It’s a little long in the tooth, but I hope it serves as a reminder of a winter’s Frisland.

SLurl Details

• Frisland (Rated: Moderate)