On March 25, 2020, the coronavirus pandemic was climbing towards its second peak. There was uncertainty about how destructive the pandemic was going to be in the long run. How many family members and loved ones would it take? It was a phenomenon of chaos and destruction that confronted us with the limitations of an engineered world. Some people exclaimed that it was a punishment from God. Others said it was Nature making us pay for the demolition of the planet. Yet others denied the severity and became convinced 'they' were executing a master scheme. Or is it simply the world's population density and global interconnection causing this outbreak? Whatever the origins or underlying reasons, if it had been devastating enough, it would have had an impact on the collective memory and behaviour of societies. And maybe it did.

For the people living along the southern coast of the North Sea—that watery part of the world—the general anxiety and distress brought back to their unconscious ancient collective memories. Namely, the millennia-old memory of the fear of water. The balance between order and chaos. Between being safe or being submerged. Between cheerful birdsongs in the morning and massive violence during the night. A Wilde Jagd ('wild hunt'), when the god Woden or the heathen King Radbod, and their dead warriors and dogs rage in the sky above the tidal marshlands. Similar watery notions were used to describe the pandemic: corona waves were sweeping through the lands.

It had been a while since the people of the West had been confronted with large-scale, life-threatening events. Times filled with great fear and horror. For a long time, big natural disasters had not taken place, and the threat of another great war was far away since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Smart and influential people even spoke of the End of History, and that the West had prevailed forever. Be that as it may, in historical perspective, this Western comfort is quite recent. Putting the socially traumatizing events of the great wars of the twentieth century aside, natural destructive forces always had a specific impact on the mentality of the people of the southern North Sea coast. From the region of Flanders (Belgium) to the region of Jutland (Denmark). From the town of Bruges to the town of Esbjerg. From the terp of Leffinge-Oude Werf in western Flanders to the terp of Misthusum in southwestern Jutland.

For two and a half millennia, the people along the southern North Sea coast have waged a relentless war against the water. This blog post explores the history of that fight, tracing how the constant threat of the waves shaped the unique mental roots, psyche, and mentality of coastal dwellers. By journeying through archaeology, history, anthropology, and psychology, we will uncover a profound regional ambivalence: a culture that simultaneously fears the sea and places its ultimate trust in it. Ultimately, this ancient struggle is still relevant. Because—let's be honest—who does not fear sea levels rising to destructive heights somewhere in the back of her or his mind these days?

This long-read blog post builds on Bernd Rieken’s seminal 2005 study, Nordsee ist Mordsee ('The North Sea is a Murderous Sea'). To our knowledge, Rieken offers the first rigorous attempt to map the Frisian mentality and psyche by synthesizing depth psychology with social history. Undertaking this research required significant courage. Following the traumatic manipulation of regional identities by fascism and National Socialism nearly a century ago, psychological profiling of ethnic or regional groups became highly sensitive—particularly within Frisian historiography (see the Annex for further context). However, while Rieken frames these psychological traits as uniquely Frisian, we argue that many of these characteristics apply broadly to all coastal populations along the southern North Sea.

Beyond being the title of Rieken’s book, Nordsee ist Mordsee is a common idiom among Wadden Sea coastal dwellers in Germany. It is also the title of a classic 1976 coming-of-age film set in Hamburg. The movie famously culminates with two fourteen-year-old boys escaping on a stolen sailboat, sailing down the River Elbe toward the sunset and the vast, untamed North Sea. The song played during this closing scene is Ich Träume Oft Davon, Ein Segelboot Zu Klau'n by Udo Lindenberg.

During the Roman era, this stretch of the North Sea coast was a fragmented tapestry of Germanic tribes. Ancient accounts document the Ampsivarii, Angles, Cananefates, Chauci, and Saxons—though the 'Saxon' name was initially synonymous with sea-raiders—alongside the Frisiavones (Romanized Frisians) and the Frisii or Fresones (Frisians proper). As the region transitioned into the Early Middle Ages, centuries of migration and consolidation simplified this complex tribal landscape. By this point, only two dominant groups remained: the Frisians, who controlled the vast marshlands, and the Saxons, who settled primarily around the Dithmarschen region and the mouth of the River Elbe.

Currently, these are the Zeelanders/Zeeuwen, Dutchmen/Hollanders, that is, the region of Holland, the Frisians, the Groningers, the Ostfriesen, including the region of Butjadingen und Stadland, the Wurstfriesen, the Ditmarsians (Thiadmaresgaho), the Saxons, the Nordfriesen, and the Jutes. Perhaps the Westfriezen of the region of Westfriesland in the province of Noord Holland want to be listed separately from the Hollanders, but we have not checked that with them. All (sub)cultures share the characteristic of living in a dangerous strip of low-lying twilight land.

1. A History of Fighting Water

At the dawn of the Holocene interglacial period nearly 12,000 years ago, surging global temperatures triggered a rapid rise in sea levels. As the North Sea expanded across the ancient landscape, nomadic populations gradually retreated toward higher ground. However, around 600 BC (2,600 years ago), coastal communities refused to flee any further. Settlers along the salt marshes of the northern Netherlands and north-western Germany made a historic stand against the tides. Instead of retreating, they engineered artificial clay mounds or terps—also known as wierden, Wurten, or Warften—and anchored their lives to the shifting coast.

When Roman soldiers arrived in this wet territory at the beginning of the era, they found the tribes of the Chauci and the Frisii living on these earthworks of clay and cow dung. The wider territory consisted of low-lying land, treeless tidal marshlands, dense wooded peatlands, bogs and swamps, lakes, rivers, rivulets, streams, long barrier beaches, dunes, islands, sandbanks, inlets, and bays. A dynamic and delicate balance of land and water, both sweet and salty. A gigantic delta, in fact, stretching from the coast of Flanders to the German Bight, with big rivers pouring their water into the sea, notably the River Rhine.

By the way, the border between the Phrissioi ('Frisians') and the Kauchoi ('Chauci') was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's Geographia, written in the second century, the River Ems called the Amisios then. Ptolemy (ca. 100-160) was, by the way, a delta-dweller too, namely from Nile delta.

The rise of sea levels during the Holocene was far from a steady process—and it remains erratic today. During the third century AD, the Dunkirk II marine transgression triggered a period of rapid sea-level rise that profoundly disrupted living conditions across the southern North Sea delta. Beyond these sweeping oceanic shifts, localized, anthropogenic factors accelerated environmental degradation and invited devastating coastal incursions. For a deeper dive into these man-made environmental pressures, see our previous blog post, A Frontier Known as Watery Mess: The Coast of Flanders.

Cumulatively, these crises triggered a near-total population hiatus across much of the coastline. By the fourth century, the region was severely depopulated, leaving behind only small pockets of survivors—likely numbering just a few thousand. While the exact role of deadly pandemics in this demographic collapse remains unclear, waves of lethal disease have swept through the broader Roman Empire during this turbulent era (Van der Heijden 2024).

From the early fifth century, populations recovered. Mostly through local migration movements of tribes living along the southern coast, more inland already, but this time including migrants from the Elbe-Weser triangle and from Denmark, later supplemented with migrants from southern Norway and Sweden. Remarkably, the by-then eleven-centuries-old terp culture survived. People continued living on terps and even exported this culture eastward into the Saxon regions of the German Bight and the marshes of the region of Dithmarschen.

The dwelling mounds on the flat, barren salt marshes grew bigger and bigger and became real settlement mounds with diameters of three hundred meters and a height of about four meters or more. In the late sixth century, Frisians also colonized the coastal plains of the northwest of the region of Flanders and the region of Nordfriesland, where terps appeared as well.

See our blog posts Burn Beacon Burn: A Coastal Inferno—Nordfriesland and A Frontier Known as Watery Mess: The Coast of Flanders to learn more about these colonization processes.

After the culturally and economically prosperous period of the Early Middle Ages, the Dunkirk III marine transgression once again disrupted life along the North Sea coast. The wetlands became even wetter. By then, the Frisians inhabited the coastal zone from western Flanders to the southwestern tip of Jutland, while the Saxons inhabited the coastal region of Dithmarschen and the mouth of the River Elbe. Faced with the advancing sea, both the Frisians and the Saxons had to adapt if they were to remain in these marshlands. Around the year 1000, people began constructing high dykes, or levees, to protect settlements and reclaim land from the sea.

Abbeys and monasteries also played a role in this process, although recent research suggests that their contribution should not be overstated. The fertile tidal marshes along the Wadden Sea attracted monastic communities, and many monasteries acquired extensive landholdings there. As Arnold (2024) notes, "early medieval monasticism was concerned with the idea that man could work to pro-actively restore a fallen world." By cultivating the landscape, creating gardens, and participating in the management of reclaimed land, monasteries sought to transform nature into an ordered and productive environment—a reflection of the medieval ideal of recreating paradise on earth.

Around 1300, after three hundred years of hard labour, they had completed the biggest earth- and woodwork in European history: the Golden Ring, or Gouden Hoepel in the Dutch language. A massive patchwork of encircling dykes, terps, canals, ditches, and sluices. All connected to each other. Stretching from the current province of Friesland in the Netherlands to Landkreis ('district') Nordfriesland in Germany, just south of the border with Denmark. A work even compared with the Great Wall of China (Steensen 1991).

that we Frisians shall establish a strong sea burh, and a golden hoop, that surrounds all of Friesland (First Riustringer Codex ca. 1300)

With bare hands, the coastal people moved more clay and earth than the sea did. Every day, every week, every month, every year. A rat race they—remarkably—were able to keep up. Just a few famous 'rings' we mention: the Westfriese Omringdijk ('Westfrisian encircling dyke'), the Slachtedyk ('sliced dyke'), and the Pingjumer Gulden Halsband ('Pingjum golden necklace'; see also our blog post When the Gate of Hell Opened at the Golden Necklace). The Pingjum Gulden Halsband is one of the oldest dyke systems on the planet. Much of it was erected in the tenth century already. Moreover, it stayed in service until the end of the nineteenth century. Almost a jaw-dropping millennium! Please, close it again.

The Frisians, in fact, honoured their name. The Romans had given their tribe the name after the verb fresare, which is vulgar Latin for milling/cutting. In other words, 'those who cut land'. For more in-depth information about the origins of the Frisian tribe's name, check out our blog post A Severe Case of Inattentional Blindness: the Frisian Tribe’s Name.

The threat of a wild sea—known among the Nordfrisians as Blanke Hans ('white Hans'), a name referring to the white foam of a raging sea—did not disappear. As temperatures continued to rise, sea levels kept climbing in front of their impressive high dykes. Moreover, the dykes themselves created an unforeseen negative side effect. During storm surges, water could no longer spread out over the vast areas of former tidal marshland behind the coast. As a result, the average water level during extreme storms was estimated to rise by an additional one and a half metres—no minor increase. With the water trapped between the dykes, the pressure on coastal defences increased considerably. At the same time, the construction of extensive coastal defence systems must also have influenced the dynamics of barrier islands, beaches, and sediment flows, since coastal landscapes function as interconnected systems in which changes in one area inevitably affect others.

The construction of the Afsluitdijk, completed in 1932, had an enormous impact on the entire Wadden Sea region. By cutting off the former Zuiderzee, it removed around 340,000 hectares of tidal storage capacity from the system. It is therefore plausible that this dramatic reduction in available space for water and sediment exchange contributed to changes in the balance of the Wadden Sea, including increased vulnerability of dunes, salt marshes, and other coastal habitats to erosion. The full consequences are complex and continue to be debated, but the principle remains clear: in a connected coastal system, every intervention has consequences. You win some, you lose some, apparently

Lastly, shortly after the completion of the Golden Ring, the so-called Little Ice Age began in the fourteenth century. The resulting decline in temperatures increased the contrast between the cold Arctic Ocean and the European mainland, which contributed to more frequent and severe storms, predominantly arriving from the west and northwest. These storms hit the Ditmarsians and Frisians particularly hard, putting additional pressure on their already vulnerable coastal landscapes. Taken together, these developments created far from favourable conditions—and the worst was yet to come.

Climate deterioration during the Little Ice Age also brought widespread crop failures, contributing to economic decline and social hardship. Maintaining and strengthening dykes required enormous labour and considerable financial resources. As these became increasingly scarce, maintenance of the Golden Ring was sometimes postponed or neglected. Once a storm surge breached the dykes, the consequences could be devastating: livestock and crops were lost, and saltwater intrusion left the soil unsuitable for cultivation for years afterwards. In times of poverty, communities could simply lack the means to repair and reinforce their coastal defences. This occurred, for example, in the Dollart Bight and the Reiderland region, the border area between the Netherlands and Germany, where after the Saint Marcellus’s Flood of January 1219 the sea gained free access to large areas of land.

However, flooding was not the only factor contributing to land loss. Between approximately 1000 and 1500, extensive commercial peat extraction took place in the coastal hinterland, causing significant subsidence of the land surface. At the same time, increasingly efficient drainage systems lowered groundwater levels and accelerated soil compaction and oxidation, further contributing to land subsidence. Together, peat exploitation, drainage, and rising storm pressures gradually increased the vulnerability of these low-lying coastal regions.

Adding up all things, the land was there for the taking by the sea in the High and Late Middle Ages. Waiting for disaster. This was just what happened. The inland sea Zuyderzee ('southern sea'), the River Lauwers Inlet, the Jade Bight, and the Dollart Bight were created or enlarged during great storm floods. Above all, most of the land of the region of Nordfriesland was washed away during this time. It went with a massive loss of humans, livestock, farms, and houses. As they say in the region of Land Wursten, die Flut frisst Korn, Vieh und Menschen ('the flood eats corn, livestock, and people').

The consequences of major floods extended far beyond the immediate loss of life during the event itself. Secondary casualties caused by famine, disease, and the disruption of livelihoods could be equally devastating. For example, in the summer of 1826, one and a half years after the catastrophic flood of February 1825, many people died from malaria. The outbreak was linked to the combination of a still waterlogged landscape and unusually warm temperatures, which created ideal breeding conditions for malaria mosquitoes (Smith 2025).

Moreover, the extensive loss of land forced many Frisians in Nordfriesland and Ostfriesland, particularly those living on islands and along the vulnerable coastal margins, to abandon their homes and resettle further inland on higher and safer ground. In this sense, some became early examples of environmental refugees—people displaced not by war or political conflict, but by long-term environmental change and the increasing vulnerability of their homeland.

For the third time in history, the people of the southern coast of the North Sea had to make up their minds: "Should I stay, or should I go?" They decided to clash and chose the first option—stay. The Phoenix confronted the Waterwolf.

Firstly, the waterfront dwellers invested in better and even higher dykes. A proven good defensive strategy. We are still familiar with the phrase Wer nicht will deichen, muß weichen ('who does not want to dyke, has to give way'). In the Low-Saxon speech of the province of Groningen the saying goes: Dei nait wil diek'n mout wiek'n. Or in the Oostfreesk speech, also called Platt, in the region of Ostfriesland: De nich will dieken, de mutt wieken.

An illustrative saga from Ostfriesland tells of Häuptling ('headman') Tidde Winnengha, who allegedly refused to participate in the construction of dykes. Catastrophic floods followed, and many villages in the Reiderland region, south of the Dollart Bight, were swallowed by the sea. Other legends tell of even darker fears: that children were sacrificed and immured within dykes and sluices, always a highly vulnerable part of any dyke system, when these structures seemed unable to withstand the power of the water. Whether these stories reflect historical events or collective memory, they reveal the profound anxiety and desperation that coastal communities must have experienced when confronted with a seemingly unstoppable sea.

INTERMEZZO

Meaning of dykes and their nature — The word dijk in the Middle Dutch language means both 'dyke', 'pool or waterhole'. The Old Frisian word dik means 'dam', and the Old English word dic means both 'dam' as 'ditch or canal'. Compare modern English dyke/dike and ditch. But also the Middle High German word tich meaning 'pond'. From all this, the basic meaning is 'to dig', which could be digging a ditch or digging a canal, and with that activity also raising a dam.

Besides its etymology, people in the Netherlands treat a dyke as a living thing. A dyke has a dijklichaam 'dyke-body', which is the core of the dyke. Furthermore, the top of the dyke is called kruin, meaning 'head/scalp'. The base of a dyke is called voet meaning 'foot'. Lastly, a dyke is always clothed. This is called bekleding 'clothing' or mantel 'cloak', to strengthen the surface against rain and waves (Freriks & Storms 2022).

In the modern Mid Frisian the word dyk means both 'dyke' and 'road' since roads used to be on top of dykes.

Secondly, coastal communities adopted a more assertive and, in a sense, more confrontational strategy: reclaiming land from the sea. By the end of the Middle Ages, inlets, bays, and inland seas were gradually being enclosed and transformed into new land. Around 1500, this piecemeal approach developed into large-scale reclamation projects, with entire areas of seabed being systematically drained and embanked at once. The former tidal flats of ’t Bildt region in the province of Friesland became the first modern, organized, and rationally planned polder ('embanked land') in European history. It was soon followed by the renowned Beemsterpolder in the province of Noord-Holland, now recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Might UNESCO have overlooked the area of 't Bildt, or do the Hollanders have a better sales department?

Anyway, the offensive strategy culminated with the sealing off of the Zuiderzee from the Wadden Sea, in combination with the creation of massive polders, namely the Wieringermeerpolder, the Noordoostpolder, and the Flevopolder. The latter is even the largest polder in the world. Casually, by shutting off the inland sea Zuiderzee, one of the biggest artificial sweet water lakes of Europe was created as well, namely Lake IJsselmeer.

Besides impoldering lakes and inland seas, from the mid-nineteenth century, everywhere along the Wadden Sea coast poor mud workers were building slender dams of thin brushwood to break the sea and speed up sedimentation. These dams are known in Dutch as slibvangers, literally 'mud catchers.' The men, resembling black ants, started their daily labour when the tide was out, and they paused when the tide came in. With these dams, tidal marshland was created, after which it was incorporated into the mainland with a new dyke. With yet another new ring. The photo-genetic remains of their works can be seen everywhere in the Wadden Sea to this date.

INTERMEZZO

The Stenen Man — On the sea dyke near the port town of Harlingen in the province of Friesland stands a memorial to Caspar de Robles (1527-1585), the Spanish governor of the Frisian lands. It is called the Stenen Man ‘stone man’. There is a tale that says when it hears the clock strike, it turns its head. Harlingen mothers are also said to send their little children there. Perhaps they have no gooseberry bushes for the babies to grow under, and storks only pass by when they are migrating. Young mothers cannot wait for that.

The monument was erected to express gratitude to this Spaniard because of his energetic battle against the waterwolf; a term for destructive flooding by the sea. During his time, the dykes along the Frisian coast were thoroughly reinforced. This came at great expense and required a lot of labour.

Once, when a breach had formed in a dyke, the nobles claimed they were not obligated to help—not financially, and certainly not physically. They went to Caspar de Robles with their letters of exemption, showed them to him, and said: “See here, our letters prove that we are free from all burdens.” To which the governor replied: “Then plug the hole with them if you can. If you cannot, then you must pay.” The nobles were forced to yield to his unyielding will and contribute to the repair of the dykes. And Caspar de Robles repaired them so well and effectively that people later recognized the importance of his work and built the Stenen Man in his honour.

Franke 1932

Note: This saga shows it was not all ‘mienskip’ or community sense among the Frisians. More like NATO discussions, about contributing to the common defence, and only when the threat gets real, its members start chipping in. Furthermore, the Stenen Man is the oldest monument in the Netherlands. Already in the year 1576, the monument was placed on this spot. In 1725, it was in such disrepair that it was torn down, but a replica was rebuilt in 1777.

But dykes need maintenance. By the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, their condition was poor. In February 1825, a devastating storm hit the southern coast of the North Sea—from southern Scandinavia to Flanders. A heavy north-western storm coincided with spring tide. In the Netherlands, the province of Friesland and the coast of the Zuiderzee were hit notably hard and dykes were breached everywhere. The sea reached the town of Alkmaar in the province of Noord Holland, and two-thirds of the province of Friesland was submerged. The Frisian port towns of Harlingen, Workum, and Stavoren lay in the frontline of the hurricane and barely escaped total destruction. People living at the Noorderhaven ('northern harbour') in the port town of Harlingen sought refuge on their roofs (Van der Woud 2022). After the storm, a Frisian farmer wrote in his diary:

Here and there floated corpses of people, and the dead cattle covered, with the big mounds of decimated houses, roofs and all kind of floating stuff, the extensive water; as far as the perplexing eye could see.

On top of great tragedies during floods and dyke breaches, great loss of life happened while working at sea, too. Illustrative is the storm during the night of March 5-6 in 1883. The fishing fleet of the tiny village of Peasens-Moddergat in the province of Friesland lost that night seventeen of its twenty-two ships. Eighty-three men died. Thus, almost the entire adult male population of a village was wiped out in a single night. Sixty-six women became widows overnight. Ten year later, on December 1st, 1893, yet another storm took the lives of many fishermen. This time those of the tiny village of Wierum, just east of Peasens-Moddergat. Thirteen of the seventeen fishing boats were lost, with a total of twenty-two men who drowned. These tragic storms were only a few out of many storms.

The Second World War threw a spanner in the works. Besides dykes being blasted on the peninsula of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland, and of Beemsterpolder and Wieringermeerpolder in the province of Noord Holland, and the inundation of the northeast of the province of Groningen between the towns of Delfzijl and Harkstede, maintenance of dykes had been poor during and after the war in Germany and in the Netherlands all this time. In February 1953, during a great storm surge, the dykes of the provinces of Zeeland and Zuid Holland broke. 1,836 people died during the disaster.

The most recent disaster is the flood of February 1962, which flooded much of the northwest of Germany, including the city of Hamburg, and cost the lives of 315 people. Following these tragedies, both in Germany and the Netherlands, dykes were strengthened, and massive storm surge barriers were built.

Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, belief in a makeable and engineerable world was at its peak. At the same time, the downside became clear: a natural environment that was heavily polluted, with the River Rhine being the horrific symbol of it—a river where once sturgeons and salmon provided fishermen with a living. Pollution had already started before the industrial revolution, with the acidic wastes of tanneries and blacksmiths. By the mid-1940s, it had become evident that the River Rhine had turned into a stinking sewer. The mines of the Ruhr, the potassium mines of Alsace, and the soda industry had turned the Rhine into an almost dead river, with fish covered in ulcers. In 1986, the climax came with the Sandoz disaster at Basel in Switzerland. Tons of insecticides, mercury, and other toxic substances flowed into the river during this incident. Half a million fish died (Hendriksma 2017).

Progress and prosperity had raised their ugly heads. Where the environment had already cracked in the decades before, the belief in the makeable world started to crack slowly as well.

The upcoming environmental concerns also meant the end of the massive land reclamation in the mid-1970s. The tidal marshlands and the Wadden Sea were increasingly appreciated for their environmental value rather than for their economic value. And, as a side remark, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the tidal marshlands are considered part of the defensive system, too, since they break the energy of the waves before these hit the dykes.

2. A Tight Community of Freeborn Republicans

Although the floods of 1953 and 1962 have not been forgotten yet, it normally takes three generations to forget traumatizing events. Let's see what our children will remember of these disasters when they have grown up. You will probably know the answer already. If not, put your tablet or laptop aside for a moment and ask them. Yes, you knew.

The history of the fear of water outlined above is one full of battle, misery, and loss. We estimated before the total number of lost lives at the Wadden Sea coast to be around half a million. Generation after generation, their whole world has revolved around water and the deep fear of it. They felt anxious when Affricus, the south-western wind, Zephyrus, the western wind, or when Chorus, the north-western wind, picked up and grew stronger, creating plundering waves. Then the coastal dwellers feared Neptune would break through the dykes and take possession of the land (Jansen & Janse 1991).

This history of continuous maritime disasters has shaped the identity of the people and their collective memory. Although the threat of the sea faded into the background over the last few decades thanks to the short-lived belief in an engineerable world, the debate about global warming due to human activity has reactivated this fear. Not only among the Ditmarsians and the Frisians, but worldwide this time. Sea levels could be driven to colossal heights. Think of the Hollywood movies Waterworld (1995), The Perfect Storm (2000), the documentary Between the Tides (2009), the Dutch drama series Als de dijken breken ('if the dykes break'), also titled The Swell (2016), and the Danish movie Qeda (2017). Just a random selection. Are the dwellers of the southern coast of the North Sea standing on the doorstep of becoming climate refugees, too?

So, we are almost out of malleable-world rehab. Good! It is a start. Unfortunately, we have not come to terms with this new situation yet. We still seem to look for a new opium or, in the language of the coastal dwellers, a beacon to cling to. Because, if we cannot control nature, what will be the consequence then? What will be the alternative? Letting Grim Reaper or Sensenmann freely haunt our cities and towns, our streets and bedrooms? Or should we write C+M+B (Christus Mansionem Benedicat) above our front doors to keep evil at bay, as they do in the Alps? Or, perhaps better, should we smear the blood of the Passover lamb on our doorposts so we won’t be struck down, as we can read in the Book of Exodus? Like the tradition of the red doorposts in the featured image of this blog post? Very much the corona lockdown avant la lettre. Indeed, parallels with today’s 'sudden' pandemic fears are numerous. Understandably, it is confusing for many.

But the coastal dwellers of northern Germany and the Netherlands already explained in the 1970s, before the climate change debate had started, that the force of the sea is not fully tameable. They just knew this. Their collective memory and roots told them so. As said earlier, traumatizing events, in general, take three generations to forget. Frisians, however, remember traumatizing events for six centuries. That is very unique when you speak of the collective memories of a society.

It was the town of Rungholt that disappeared overnight into the sea during the great storm flood of 1362. This was the Second Saint-Marcellus' Flood, also known as the Grote Mandrenke ('great drowning of men'). Estimates suggest that at least 25,000 people died in a single night. The Nordfriesen still told this story in the twentieth century, of which everyone thought it was a mere legend. A myth. Until just before the Second World War, archaeological finds revealed that the town of Rungholt indeed existed. It was washed away, and even at the spot where people said the town was located, folklore persisted. Not exactly the forgiving type, those Frisians, but quite an achievement. It must be baffling for anthropologists. Speak a bit louder, please, because we cannot hear you.

Today, if you tell a Nordfries that she or he lives on a beautiful island, you might get a response that it is not an island at all. It is land. Do not be confused. Do not be alarmed either. She or he is not suffering from hallucinations. Only, confirming it is an island a Frisian would admit her or his defeat against the sea. That all the great loss of lives and land, all the fear for many generations has been for nothing. It also shows Frisians are experts in repressing tragic events without ever forgetting them. Thus, be careful when marrying a Frisian.

INTERMEZZO

Mackerel in Ditches — Little anecdotes fitting within the tradition of the coastal peoples' memories say that during his childhood, the author was explained how the sea used to appear on the western side of the Slachtedyk one time and on the eastern side of this dyke another time. People were also told by their parents that mackerel from the open sea swam in the sweet water ditches of polders as an omen of a severe storm at hand, while the sun was still shining.

Another aspect of the Frisians is that their sense of identity, of being a community, is relatively strong. It was (and partially still is) a people scattered over islands, islets, and peninsulas, separated by seas, lakes, and big rivers. Today, they are spread over several countries as well. The number of dialects used to be enormous. Even on some of the small Wadden Sea islands, completely different dialects were and are spoken, often hardly understandable to each other. Illustrative is the region of Nordfriesland. There are less than 10,000 speakers of the North Frisian language left, and within the region, there are fifteen very differing dialects spoken. Hence, almost every village has its own Frisian dialect.

Some argue that a distinct, separate language forms the core of a culture or a people (De Vries 2019). According to this view, without a language of one’s own there can be no identity of one’s own. This proposition, however, ignores an obvious fact: many nations speak English without feeling English. The same applies to Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, and other widely used languages. One might classify this approach as a form of identity fundamentalism or identity minimalism.

If, for example, the Flemings were confronted with this doctrine, Abe de Vries might well fear for his life. Worse still, were the Scots to be told that, because they speak English, they are no longer Scots, De Vries would face certain lynching. For the Frisians, too, a common language is not a decisive characteristic, although it remains an important element of identity as long as some form, however weakened, of the language is still spoken. The Ostfriesen and most Nordfriesen have not spoken Frisian for centuries, yet many still regard Frisian identity as part of who they are. In fact, the broader picture is that most Frisians today do not speak Frisian (properly) at all.

Interestingly, the few thousand Ostfriesen who still do speak the East-Frisian language, that is, the geographically isolated Saterland-Frisians in the region of Ostfriesland, for long were not regarded as Frisians by the Ostfriesen, who themselves speak Platt or German. Reason: they were Catholic, whilst the 'true' Ostfriesen were Protestant. Say cheese.

That the concept of community is still alive was illustrated in the province of Friesland in 2018. That year, the town of Leeuwarden was the cultural capital of Europe and had chosen Iepen Mienskip, meaning 'open community', as its central theme. Also, the fact that the inhabitants of the province of Friesland belong to one of the happiest people in the world, despite being relatively economically backward, might have to do with this somewhat stronger sense of identity and community.

Notwithstanding the seemingly geographical and linguistic fragmentation of the Frisians, working together in the eternal fight against water was their vital connection. To maintain the soggy Golden Ring that connected them, language, for example, was less important for being a community. Working together was.

The territory was also impenetrable for foreign powers to conquer, and at the same time it was fertile and connected to the world via seaways and river gateways. This made it possible for the Ditmarsians and the Frisians to do without central authorities, without feudal lords during most of the Middle Ages. Basically, every individual, every farmer was free. Every extended family had its own terp, wierde, or Warft, and its own private church built on it. The density of medieval churches along the Wadden Sea coast is even the greatest on earth. Also, the number of medieval monasteries was huge. In late medieval Frisia, between the River Vlie and the River Weser, there existed about 115 monasteries (De Boer 2017).

Therefore, a truly republican spirit and self-reliant society existed. Countless very small free-farmer republics were loosely united under the collaboration of the league of the Seven Sealands. The separate Frisian lands even founded a treaty to work together in the High Middle Ages, the Treaty of Upstalsboom. Near the town of Aurich in the region of Ostfriesland, during the thing, Frisians ruled in disputes, discussed matters of cooperation, and, above all, chose new laws for the whole of Frisia. This choosing of their own laws, which was considered the highest and most sacred authority, was the core of republican freedom.

The republican organization formed by the Seven Sealands was unique for Europe at that time, except for Switzerland where a similar development had taken place. The republican mishmash also meant that cooperation to ward off the threat of the sea and of external powers had to be organized from the bottom up. Cooperation was not imposed from the top down. For centuries, they had been successful in doing that. In Frisia, the myth of being free, both as a person and as a community, was dominant for many centuries. Only in the Late Middle Ages did the lord-free society of the Seven Sealands come creaking and shrieking to a halt. The free farmer republics of Dithmarschen, Land Wursten, and Frisia had been subdued by (mostly) foreign powers, finally.

This myth of freedom extended to the Frisians by Charlemagne himself, was still very much alive in the nineteenth century. A quote to illustrate this:

Our ancestors were given their privileges by Emperor Charlemagne as a reward for their honesty and bravery, and our freedoms originate from him.

Even today, being ‘Frisian and Free’ is still a phrase that resonates in all regions of former Frisia. The motto 'rather dead than slave' can be heard in many language variations, like Lever dood as slaav, Leafer dea as slaef, or Leewer duad üüs slaav. But also the phrase eala frya Fresena is still being used, meaning 'stand up free Frisians'.

In addition, symbol of the national farmers protests in the Netherlands in the year 2020, was the Frisian flag. Farmers of the province of Noord Holland even drove their tractors over the thirty-kilometers-long Afsluitdijk ('enclosure dam') to the province of Friesland to hand over the Dutch flag, and to receive the Frisian flag. A change of allegiance. In the southern province of Noord Brabant, farmers hoisted the Frisian flag in front of the town hall in the town of Den Bosch.

The flip-side, by the way, of this independent republican society was that the outer world stigmatized the Ditmarsians, Wurstfriesen, and the Frisians as unsophisticated, stupid farmers. Not anymore, of course.

3. The Psyche of the Coastal Peoples

Different from other peoples, Frisians did not indicate time by referring to past great battles of war, as was common practice. No, they referred to another great storm flood that had happened before. When in the year 1717, Frisia was hit by the Christmas Flood, killing an estimated 14,000 people, they still knew about a former great flood, the All Saints’ Flood of 1570 that killed an estimated 20,000 people. Many sagas and myths even go back to earlier times and speak of a coastline that lay much further to the west, which we know now is correct. We have already mentioned above the case of Rungholt, preserved in the collective memory of the Frisians for a staggering six centuries. But also memories of sea inlets like the Dollart Bight, created after a great storm that could not be closed again, have been recalled for a long time, along with the loss of the Wadden Sea island of Bosch.

This repetitive destruction, repetitive loss of life, livestock, houses, and—indeed—fertile land, has been traumatizing and shaped the psyche and mentality of the coastal dwellers. Turn it around, how could it not have? To get a glimpse of the loss of land and islands, see our post Atlantis Found! Wait, There Is Another One, or 7, Wait 12, What? 16 in Total... No, 19!

After reading all of the above, one might ask why in heaven’s name people continued to live at this low-lying, volatile waterfront of the North Sea. At the unshielded, barren tidal marshland. Even without quite crucial resources like stone, wood, and sweet water available? Two reasons help to explain their deviant behaviour.

The first reason is that the salt marshes offered exceptionally fertile pastures for livestock, especially cattle and sheep. In addition, the peatlands a bit more inland offered turf and salt. Besides these highly valuable resources, a big delta like this one is a great hub for trade. Connected with the wider world via sea and via the rivers Scheldt, Meuse, Rhine, Ems, Weser, Jade, Elbe, Eider, and Vidå, to name only the biggest and most important ones. The delta is a crossroad. The skills you need to possess are knowing how to survive in this dynamic territory and how to sail. And you need ships, of course. This is how the Frisians became the central brokers of Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were known as the freighters of Europe for the massive ship trade on the Baltic Sea and the coasts of France, Britain, and Norway. In other words, there were many economic benefits to living along this dangerous strip of land.

The second reason why these coastal dwellers stayed, is unrealistic optimism. From empirical psychology, we know that most people tend to perceive risks concerning personal health less than for others. The illusion of control, especially if there is something to gain.

A more deeper meaning of the landscape and psyche of the coastal dwellers is that they were physically and mentally literally living on the border of order and chaos, of structure and destruction.

Where it [id; unconscious] was, shall I [ego; conscious] be

The border is even defined very clearly and sharply: the dyke. Behind the dyke is the inner world of order, culture, and structure. It is protected by the ring. Outside the dyke exists chaos, ruled by the wild forces of nature: the sea and its destructive capacity. The inner world is their conscious (Ich) and the outer world their unconscious (Es). A Frisian legend has it that heathen King Radbod rides with his horse over the salt marshes when it storms and thunders. Go to the crest of the dyke, look over the tidal marshlands, and wait for this spectacle of fear and destruction.

With building dykes, the coastal dwellers tried to control the chaos by incorporating it into the mainland. In fact, they tried to culture nature. To culture or tame wilderness. Each time pushing the boundary toward the sea with a new encircling dyke. Bringing Ich towards Es, as much as possible. Making consciousness bigger and the unconsciousness smaller. Very appropriately, Sigmund Freud added in this respect:

It is cultivation labour, like the reclamation of the Zuiderzee

This constant interaction, both physically and mentally, between order and chaos, between cultivation and wilderness, is not unique for waterfront people of the (former) tidal marshlands. Human nature is to de-nature itself, as it were. Much of the planet's land wilderness has been reduced to controllable parks and reserves, with humankind trying to position itself above it. At the same time, civilization has its roots in wilderness, just as Romulus and Remus were brought up by a wild wolf and founded the Roman Empire. Therefore, true wilderness is also a fascinating mirror of humans, a reminder and alert of the destructive, dark forces every human carries within.

In European history, the wolf is pre-eminently the creature symbolizing this duality of pushing away and attraction. We are afraid of the wolf but love its cultivated variant, the dog. One's fear of the wilderness is the fear of their own wildness. Think also of the werewolf, a harmless human and harmful beast at the same time. Not for nothing did Freud sign his paintings with 'Wolf Man' (Smeyers 2023). Not for nothing did Quentin Tarantino create the character Winston Wolf in his movie Pulp Fiction (1994), who dealt with savage matters. Not for nothing is a wild sea nicknamed the waterwolf. See for more background about the wolf and its relation with Frisia our post Who's Afraid of Voracious Woolf?—The Dread Beast Is Back.

A comparable mental code of opposites between chaos and order, between cultivation and wilderness, we touched upon earlier this post, too, namely one stemming from Christianity. Early medieval monasticism tried to restore a fallen word. Before mankind was locked out of paradise. This was one of the drivers why monks worked relentlessly to turn nature into landscapes, into arable and fertile lands, and into (cloister) gardens. The landscape is both nature and human. Think of the Old English word tūn for 'yard' or 'enclosed ground', or the modern Mid Frisian word tún for 'garden'.

Not without coincidence, the English word 'landscape' derives from the Dutch word landschap. It expresses land being cultivated, ordered by human hands. It has a positive connotation, where nature and culture are in harmony, where you feel safe and secure. Cultivated land behind the dykes was considered a sacred inner world (Knottnerus 2005). The French philosopher Lemaire (1970) explained that everything within humans wants not to be denied or ignored by nature. Instead, nature offers us shelter and houses us by providing a universe on a scale fitting for humans (Freriks & Storms 2022).

The Frisians even have their own saint, namely Saint Walfrid, who transformed the swamp forests around the village of Bedum in the modern province of Groningen into arable land suitable for human habitation. When the destructive forces, the Vikings, came to the land, Walfrid was murdered. Check out our blog post Walfrid, You'll Never Walk Alone.

In this mental model, a catastrophic storm surge breaching the dykes of the Golden Ring mirrors the profound psychological fracturing of a severe borderline crisis. As the waters break through, all defining contours and structures instantly dissolve. Solid land liquefies into the sea, plunging the world into a state of total chaos, destruction, and disorientation. The civilized landscape is completely erased, allowing untamed wilderness and primal savageness to return. It is, in the most literal sense, profoundly traumatizing. This psychological collapse closely echoes the apocalyptic visions of the seer Hertje of Wiedingharde in Nordfriesland. According to the sagas she is believed to have lived around the year 1400, and prophesied (Müllenhoff 1845):

A golden ring will be placed around Wiedingharde, but it will have no permanence. After that, two dams will be built, one from Tønder, the other from Rodenäs to Brunsodde. Men will work on it for seven years and it will cost much, but it will not last long. After that time, much shame and vice will enter the land, and honour will no longer be respected.

For the new kids on the block who find this concept and emotion difficult to grasp, think of The Wall in the series Game of Thrones, when in season 7 The Wall comes crashing down and the White Walkers and the undead enter civilization. Feel it? Well, that wall or icy dyke separated chaos from order too.

According to psychoanalysis, Ich and Es should be brought together as much as possible, knowing that it will never be fully achieved. As such, the coastal people of the southern North Sea already warned in an early stage, before the global warming debate, that the sea will never be fully controllable. Indeed, in the meantime new water management approaches are being developed and implemented that accept and embrace the dynamics of water, both sweet and salt, instead of the classic reflex of resisting it. These concepts give water more space once again. The mighty River Rhine, once straightened and channelled between high dykes, is now, where possible, being released from its straitjacket. At the same time, research is being carried out to adjust coastal agriculture to the inevitable more saline environment in the future.

When, as described above, in the mid-1970s the environmental movement brought a justifiable halt to the activity of reclaiming land from the sea, most inhabitants of the provinces of Friesland and Groningen just did not understand it and were upset. How can you give up good fertile land to the water? Your eternal enemy? Why should you stop trying to take back land from the sea which it had taken from you before, in the first place? Even recently in the province of Zeeland, these emotions resurfaced. In 2012, an unprecedented conflict arose between Belgium and the Netherlands because the latter refused to fulfil its part of a bilateral treaty, namely to give the Hedwigepolder back to the sea, i.e., the River East-Scheldt estuary. It hit the ancient nerves of the fear of and struggle with water. At the time of writing (2021), the matter still has not been completely resolved.

What we can make out of all this is that the coastal dweller is very sensitive to order, chaos, and water. They have been confronted for ages with a very frequently destructive wilderness, namely the sea. It gave the Frisians greater resilience because they developed more sophisticated coping skills and organizational accomplishments (Arnold 2024). At the same time, they have always depended on the sea, including the many rivers that emptied out into the sea, for trade and nutrition. Moreover, the Frisians, living in a natural hostile environment, have also managed it themselves, together as free individuals—a relatively equal society. For centuries, no lords, no kings, no cities, and no taxes.

Then water itself. Its meaning is very ambivalent. In the biblical vision, waters have agency and have, at least, two faces. On the one hand, water is used to wash one's feet, to be baptized. The Bible also speaks of a river that went out of Eden, and therefore holy. On the other hand, the earth was deliberately brought back to a watery chaos after mankind had become corrupt and violent. Everything had to be cleansed again. Only Noah and some animals could survive in his Ark. Incidentally, Noah's grandson, Prince Friso, son of the first King Sem, happened to be the ancestor of the tribe of the Frisians. According to legend, that is. In addition, if you could stay dry when in contact with water, it was a sign of divineness in the Christian perspective. Think of Jesus who walks on water on the Sea of Galilee, or think of Moses who leads the Jewish people through the Dead Sea while fleeing from the pharaohs in Egypt. So, waters wash, cleanse, punish, threaten, and thwart (Rieken 2005, Arnold 2024).

Abbot Emo (ca. 1175-1237) of the monastery of Bloemhof (‘flower garden’) at the village of Wittewierum in the modern province of Groningen says in his Cronica Floridi Horti (‘chronicle flower garden’) the following about the destructive Marcellus Flood in January 1219:

A great flood, however, takes place because of our crimes, because it is written that the sons of Cain in the time of Noah often indulged in shameful fornication with the wives of their brothers. Being angry at the sins of mankind, the Lord said: “I repent that I have created mankind. I will destroy mankind I created. I will destroy it together with the earth,” that is, with the fruitfulness of the earth; for the earth lost its fertility and strength during the great flood.

A contemporary, more practical explanation of why Frisia was affected by the destructive Marcellus Flood is that the Frisians did not pay taxes, the so-called tienden ('tenths') and eerstelingen ('firsts'), this according to Abbot Menko of the monastery of Bloemhof. All very foolish and silly, of course, because if they had paid taxes, they would have received a fourfold compensation. According to the church father Augustine, namely, when giving a tenth to the church, in return, crops will be rich, in addition to enjoying good physical health too.

The fact that a great storm flood was a punishment from God shaped the minds of the coastal people, too, over the last thousand years or so. Think of the incalculable Frisian sagas concerning drowned or sunken towns or villages like Bense, Rungholt, Weene, Esonstad, Westeel, Torum, and many more. These often have as a theme that the citizens were filthy rich and flouted God and his Commandments, and for that, they were heavily punished.

In a way, 'punishment' gave meaning to people after a catastrophe had happened again. Until the great flood of 1953 in the province of Zeeland, called the Watersnoodramp ('flood disaster'), great storm floods always received the name of the Catholic Saint of the Day. For there must be a reason, an explanation for such evil to befall men. Similar social reflexes have been witnessed with the corona pandemic in Brazil: the collective in search of the source of evil when life-threatening disasters take place (Simõesa et al 2020). There must be an explanation, a relief, a way out, and an end to it all.

Whether or not it is an imaginary vengeful God, or an imaginary disgruntled Nature that punishes mankind for their wrongdoing by sending the corona pandemic into the world, accepting retribution is a way for people to comprehend and deal with deadly and uncontrollable catastrophes. Pointlessness is even harder to accept—ora et labora ('pray and work').

This might also be an explanation of why the story of Moby-Dick has rooted in our collective memory for already 170 years. The wild white whale that kills Captain Ahab at sea, but only after giving the vengeful, one-legged captain three clear warnings to give it up. Eventually, the forces of nature will bring everything back to disorder if not respected. Revenge on nature is revenge on oneself.

Note that the author of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville (1819-1891), is of Dutch and thus of 'watery' descent. Infected with the antique psyche of the southern North Sea coast as well. Only read the famous opening lines of his novel:

Hunting whales, by the way, is something Frisians passionately did in the Arctic during the early modern period. Check our post Happy Hunting Grounds in the Arctic. The Way the Whale's Doom Was Sealed and learn that the Frisians are to blame majorly for the (near) extinctions of the whale in the northern ice seas.

Conclusion

Besides being eager for individual profit, being republican by nature, packed with the illusion of risks control, and overly sensitive to creating order and structure, more importantly, repetitive natural catastrophes have also formed a tight, self-reliant community with a strong collective memory.

Indeed, out of averting the inevitable an unruly community was born.

Note 1 — Another fear has reshaped much of the landscape in the Netherlands, namely the fear of hunger. During the Second World War, the Dutch experienced hunger. A resistance hero and farmer, from the coast of the Wadden Sea in the province of Groningen, Sicco Mansholt (1909-1995), became the most influential politician in the Netherlands and Europe on agricultural policies ever. With his motto 'never to suffer hunger again,' he reformed agriculture into large-scale production. You could say, never again he would allow chaos to take over. Due to his policies the landscape was fundamentally changed. Made suitable for mass production and heavy machines. Every last piece of 'wilderness' was erased. Every tree was felled because every square meter meant more production. It happened without any care for or awareness of the consequences for nature. Indeed, great order was created. The obsession of the coastal dweller.

At the end, Mansholt understood that nature was suffering too much under his policies, and that a healthy nature is a prerequisite for life as such. Or, in the frame of Moby-Dick and Sigmund Freud, be ahead of nature's revenge because then everything will disintegrate into chaos again.

See our post Golden Calves, or Bursting Udders on Bony Legs? for more on Sicco Mansholt.

Note 2 — Featured image the ritual of passover lamb.

Annex

Bernd Rieken took in his book Nordsee ist Mordsee the mentality theory a deep step further. He explains that in the psychology the primary object of love is the mother, and that mother and water are similar, exchangeable. Out of water one is born. It nourishes, gives protection, connection and harmony. With that also comes the wish to merge with the mother or return to the water. Especially, if someone is in a state of crisis. A poem of Philip Booth illustrates this feeling. Pay specific attention to the last words.

Lie back daughter, let your head be tipped back in the cup of my hand. Gently, and I will hold you. Spread your arms wide, lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls. A dead- man's float is face down. You will dive and swim soon enough where this tidewater ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe me, when you tire on the long thrash to your island, lie up, and survive. As you float now, where I held you and let go, remember when fear cramps your heart what I told you: lie gently and wide to the light-year stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Philip Booth

According to Rieken this is what the fascism movement offered the people: to merge into the greater whole. A concept very much in line with the mentality of the coastal people. That is the reason why the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) received more than average support from the Frisians, again, according to Rieken. The paradox that most ‘freien Friesen‘ in Germany supported in the years 1932 and 1933 the enemy of freedom, the NSDAP (Steensen 2020).

To our opinion, extending the individual need to merge with the mother/water for security, which is a valid well-known theory, to an identical need of a collective, is a big step too far.

Furthermore, if you look at the Frisians living in the Netherlands before and during the war, there was little support for the fascism movement. The Dutch equivalent of the NSDAP, the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB) secured only one seat in the regional parliament Provinciale Staten of Friesland in 1935. In 1939 the number of seats dropped to zero again. Despite specific interest of derailed personalities like Seys Inquart and Heinrich Himmler, aka Reichsheini, for the Frisian people supposedly being a pure Arian race, the Friese Beweging (‘Frisian movement’) did not took much interest either. Seys Inquart and Reichsführer Himmler even visited the province of Friesland immediately after the invasion of the Netherlands.

However, the two organizations forming the Friese beweging (namely Selskip foar Fryske Tael en Skriftekennisse, and Kristlik Frysk Selskip) díd start a cooperation with the fascist Fryske Folkspartij (FFP) in the so-called driemanschap (‘triumvirate’). But this cooperation went awry soon. The FFP, by the way, only had about thirty members.

Everything taken together, for us reason to think the difference in support for fascism between the Frisians in Germany and those in the Netherlands had other causes, and cannot be explained (only) with the psycho-analytical explanation of ‘Frisians wanting to return to their water, to return to their mama’. We must dig deeper! Maybe the modern history of the region of Nordfriesland of being yo-yoed between the realms of Denmark, the House of Habsburg, and Prussia, and the empty promises made by these empires to the Nordfriesen for more autonomy, might have had something to do with it. Who knows. Just saying.

Suggested music

Led Zeppelin, When the Levee Breaks (1971)

Peggy Lee, Fever (1958)

Udo Lindenbergs & das Panik-Orchester, Ich Träume Oft Davon, Ein Segelboot Zu Klau'n (1976)

Titantic Orchestra, Alexander's Ragtime Band (1912)

Further reading

Arnold, E.F., Medieval Riverscapes. Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, c. 300-1100 (2024)

Boer, de D.E.H., Emo's reis. Een historisch culturele ontdekkingstocht door Europa in 1212 (2017)

Cohen, P.N., Pandemic-related decline in injuries related to women wearing high-heeled shoes: Analysis of U.S. data for 2016-2020 (2021)

Deen, M., De Wadden. Een geschiedenis (2013)

Dengang, Stormflud—som Guds straf? (2019)

Delfstra, T., Allerheiligenvloed 1570. Ramp voor Oostdongeradeel? (2020)

Döring, M. & Ratter, B., “I show you my coast…” A relational study of coastscapes in the North Frisian Wadden Sea (2021)

Franke, S., Sagen en legenden rond de Zuiderzee (1932)

Freriks, K. & Storms, M., Grensverkenningen. Langs oude grenzen in Nederland (2022)

Heijden, van der P., Pandemieën in de oudheid (2024)

Hendriksma, M., De Rijn. Biografie van een rivier (2017)

Huisman, K., Penjumer Halsbân (1994)

Jansen, H.P.H. & Janse, A. (transl.), Kroniek van het klooster Bloemhof te Wittewierum (1991)

Jensen, L., Floods as shapers of Dutch cultural identity: media, theories and practices (2021)

Jensen, L., Hoe de strijd tegen het water de Nederlandse identiteit vormde (2021)

Knottnerus, O.S., History of human settlement, cultural change and interference with the marine environment (2005)

Knottnerus, O.S., Van Waddenland tot Waddenzee, of: Hoe de dijk tot scheidslijn werd (2023)

Kok, A., Randland. Portret van de Friese en Groningse kuststrook (2001)

Melville, H., Moby-Dick or The Whale (1851)

Mingren, W., Startling Similarity between Hindu Flood Legend of Manu and the Biblical Account of Noah (2015)

Monster, T., De Nederlandse identiteit. Het historiografisch debat ontleed (2022)

Müllenhoff, K., Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der herzogtümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg (1845)

Nijmeijer, B., En God voor ons allen. In het buitenland bezoeken we al die kerken terwijl ze thuis aan je voeten liggen (2020)

Penning, Y., Stormvloed. De spectaculaire ondergang van het waddeneiland Bosch in het begin van de 80-jarige oorlog (2007)

Phoa, A.L. & Schaaf, van der M., Drinkbare rivieren (2021)

Pleijster, E.J., Veeken, van der C. & Jongerius, R., Dijken van Nederland (2014)

Post, J., Zoden aan de dijk. Dijken rondom en overal / Diken by ‘t soad. Seadden oan de dyk. De waterstaat voor 1500 in Friesland opnieuw bekeken, met uitlopen tot 1600 en 1700, aan de hand van onderzoeken, opgravingen en toevallige ontdekkingen (2020).

Rieken, B., Nordsee ist Mordsee. Sturmfluten und ihre Bedeutung für die Mentalitätsgeschichte der Friesen (2005)

Rijcken, T., Het water komt, maar wees niet bang (2022)

Rooijendijk, C., Waterwolven. Een geschiedenis van stormvloeden, dijkenbouwers en droogmakers (2009)

Simõesa, S.S., Blanchette T.G., Murray L., & Silvaac, da A.P., The prostitute, the city, and the virus (2020)

Smeyers, K., Wolf. Wildernisgeschiedenis (2023)

Smith, R., In 1825 stond Groningen onder water, maar de echte ramp gebeurde een jaar later (2025)

Steensen, T. Die Friesen. Menschen am Meer (2020)

Teetied & Rosinenbrot (podcast), Die Weihnachtsflut 1717—wer schützt heute die Deiche? (2021)

Vriend, E., Eens ging de zee hier tekeer (2020)

Vries, O., Friezen en Fascisten (year unknown)

Vries, de A., De Brykfryske Mienskip. Lêzing hâlden foar de Jongfryske Mienskip, Oerterp, 1 November 2019, blog Seedyksterfeartfisk (2019)

Winsemius, P., Het koningsvaandel. Reis door het verleden van Friesland (2014)

Woud, van der A., De Nederlanden. Het lege land 1800-1850 (2022)