Koffiecultuur

by Herm De Vries

Sometimes the same thing can be found in various cultures, but what it means in those cultures is quite different. In terms of Dutch versus American culture, this observation comes to mind when I think about a very everyday thing: coffee.

Whenever I’m talking to Americans about the Netherlands, I usually soon find myself talking about the Dutch koffiecultuur.

Coffee Culture doesn’t say much in English, so what do I mean when I talk about a koffiecultuur in the Netherlands? Well, on one level, the Dutch sure do seem to like coffee and they drink a fair amount of it. Dutch history with coffee as a commodity might certainly explain why. The Dutch were early and major traders in coffee, largely because of their presence in Indonesia (which the Dutch used to call East Indies, which immediately brings to mind the East Indies Company, the VOC, which was the world’s first multinational corporation and made gazillions of guilders for the Dutch). It’s not for nothing that a short hand for coffee has long been “Java.” Java is of course the name of one of the major islands in Indonesia. So coffee has meant a lot for the Dutch economy, and that’s helpful background for the koffie obsession in the Netherlands. But it’s not what I mean when I say koffiecultuur.

Do I mean that the Dutch drink a LOT of coffee? Depending on which statistics you look at, they do in fact consume a lot of coffee. In 2018,

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WorldAtlas ranked the Dutch fifth in the world in coffee consumption. However, a 2020 study published in the Canadian University Magazine has the Dutch coming in as the number-one coffee drinking country in the world, topping Finland and Sweden, which claim second and third place. The Dutch apparently drink 8.4 kilograms worth of java per year1 .

So the Dutch have an economic history of coffee—moving it around the world through their vast shipping networks. And they put a lot of coffee down the hatch on a daily basis. What I mean by koffiecultuur is certainly related to these facts, but it’s still more than that.

For the Dutch, coffee is a ritual––one with layers of meaning. The ritual is easily observable to an outsider. Koffie is ingrained in the rhythms and patterns of one’s day. Of course there are exceptions, but my observation is that most people have a fixed time in the morning, say 10:30 a.m., which is coffee time. There are even words for it: koffietijd or koffiepauze. (Even if you drink tea or juice then, it can still be called koffiepauze.) Many people will take a coffee break in mid-afternoon too. Perhaps this is reminiscent of or in imitation of the tea time which is a British practice that upper-class Dutch also practiced for a long time. And finally, many people will have the ritual coffee during the ritual evening news viewing at 8 p.m. My related observation is that the Dutch are more patterned—more ritual oriented—than most Americans I know. My impression probably has a lot to do with the nearly religious observance of koffietijd amongst the Dutch.

But there’s yet another ritualistic part of the koffiecultuur. And this is another area where I see huge differences between Dutch and North American culture. Koffie marks the welcoming of people or it marks the start or transition of events. If you come to someone’s home—or even just drop by, the odds are very high that you’ll very quickly be offered a cup of coffee. Wil je een kopje koffie? Zal ik koffie zetten? Here’s where koffie begins to mean much more than coffee. This

Servet Delft “Papieren servetten met Delfts blauwe print. Past perfect bij de bordjes, bekers en koffie sets die zijn ontworpen voor het Rijksmuseum.” Image from https://klevering.com

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gesture is a signal that you are welcome. It’s an invitation to stay for a while (but not forever!). It’s an invitation for a conversation.

In a related way, koffie provides the transition between the welcome and the start of the thing you’ve come somewhere for. I often travel with small groups in the Netherlands. We’ve gone, dozens of times, for example, to a school, a church, a university, a business or some such place to meet a local expert or to take in a presentation. Inevitably, the group will be first welcomed to a large table or reception area and offered coffee. Again, it’s not primarily about the coffee. It’s about settling in––about the necessary time for introductions and small talk. It’s about a ritualistic ramping up to the thing you’ve come there for. The same goes for intermissions in an event. I often take my students to a classical music concert when in the Netherlands. There’s usually an intermission, and while that intermission is often as late as 9 p.m. or so, you’ll see at least as many people drinking coffee as those sipping a glass of wine. The intermissions are long, and the coffee provides a structural way, I think, for there to be a long enough time for a true break and some conversation.

It goes even deeper. I once knew of a friend who with his spouse was at a Dutch hospital for a consultation with a surgeon. At the meeting, the doctor presented the couple with a devastating diagnosis. The doctor stepped momentarily out of the room, whereupon a nurse came in and, first of all, asked if she could get the two a cup of coffee. The gesture had little or nothing to do with coffee per se and certainly wasn’t at that moment an invitation for conversation. No, the nurse was saying, with the gesture, here: I know you need a moment to process this. Can I help give you a hand with that in this very small way by putting something warm in your hands while you take some time to process what you’ve just heard. You might say that, in this sense, koffie meant comfort in the sense of “wishing you comfort.” The Dutch even have an expression that gets at this. Sometimes they’ll call a cup of coffee a “cup of comfort” (kopje troost or bakkie troost).

At the end of the day, for the Dutch, koffie is all about form. There is an ingrained form to human, social interaction. Koffie is ultimately a vehicle, even a short hand, for that form. When certain forms—certain practices—show up over and over again in a people we call that culture. And that’s why one of the things you need to understand about the Dutch, if you want to comprehend their culture, is the role of koffie. Heb je zin in een kopje koffie?

(Footnotes)

1Bernard, Kristine. “Top 10 Coffee Consuming Nations.” WorldAtlas, Jan. 5, 2018, worldatlas.com/articles/top-10-coffee-consumingnations.html.

Olivia Nelson, “The Countries Most Addicted to Coffee 2020.“ October 4, 2020. https:// www.universitymagazine.ca/the-countries-mostaddicted-to-coffee-2020/

Dr. Herman De Vries Jr is professor of Germanic Languages at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At Calvin, he holds the Frederik Meijer Chair in Dutch Language and Culture.

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