Bomen hebben wortels, mensen hebben benen, ideeën hebben vleugels: een introductie

Trees have roots, people have legs, ideas have wings: an introduction

Taking a philological field trip in 1837 by A.H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben as an example, this essay demonstrates how the rise of medievalism and national philology in the Netherlands was not a homegrown development, but a result of Dutch-Flemish, Flemish-German and Dutch-German cross-currents. The sample case is used to demonstrate various approaches in transnational history. Poly-system theory, Cultural Transfer, histoire croisée, innovation-diffusion modelling and Actor-Network Theory are all useful correctives to infrastructural determinism. But the implicit capacity of culture to communicate and disseminate itself beyond its context of origin (already reflected in the ninth-century manuscript discovered by Hoffmann on his field trip) should be recogniozed as a fundamental starting point in all historical reearch.