Veluwe - Gelderland Inhospitable, impenetrable, and inhabited by magical beings you’d better avoid: for centuries, this was the commonly held belief about the Veluwe, where a dark, dense, age-old forest once led into boggy marshland, a veil of mist lingering on even the sunniest of days. The first settlers felled the trees and filled in the ponds, creating heathland and, later, sand drifts; their villages were lonely islands in a sea of desolate land.