Friesland in The Netherlands? I'm also highly sceptical. Polar Bear ranges WOULD have been altered by the Little Ice Age, but not that much, theyve have had to roam down scandanavia, cross the Skagarak/Kattegat, come through Denmark and Northern Germany. The seas around Denmarks islands froze, but the open ocean didnt. The bears would have had to cross through way much occupied land. I cant find any references for it, but thats because I dont think there are any.

There might well have been polar bears in what is now the Netherlands after the last proper ice age, but during the little ice age? I do not think so. There had been brown bears here a few centuries prior to the little ice age, but they went extinct in the 11th century.

The dog is also confusing me, i can't find any kind of Frisian shepherd. The only Frisian breeds i've found are the Stabyhoun and the Wetterhoun, neither of which are shepherds.

Unfortunately, the "Little Ice Age" is a myth perpetuated by historians looking for an easy answer to the rapid decline in standards of living in Europe after the Black Death. Although Europe became cooler in the early modern period (after 1500), the difference would have been negligible. The data supporting the existence of the "Little Ice Age" indicates that any major climatic shift happened in what is now the eastern United States, not Europe.

I took a seminar on the "Global Middle Ages" and a climate specialist came in and showed us a bunch of pictures of cute seals and a bunch of data. The above statement is pretty much what I got out of the discussion. I can dig the articles that we read for that day out, but they use a variety of tests to determine the above statement and agree that the climatic shift was negligible at best.