The Netherlands was formed by its relationship with the water and you’ll find traces of this everywhere in the Wadden area. Terps and mounds, an intricate network of dikes, pumping stations, polders and the Afsluitdijk. The Wadden has a reputation to uphold when it comes to water management. The coast and the islands have largely been reclaimed from the sea. Often it fought back with devastating storm floods. But the Wadden area made peace with the sea. For the first time in history water is allowed more space; a sustainable answer to climate change.
The mainland’s coastline grew with the dynamics of the Wadden Sea and increasing knowledge of water management. With each tide the sea left behind a little bit of sediment, raising the land along the coast. The fertile clay soil attracted the first settlers. They extracted sod from the marsh which they used to raise terps and mounds. Archaeological research shows that from the 1st century on the inhabitants of the terps began to construct ring dikes around the terps to protect their crops from flooding.
Around the year 200 this no longer sufficed and floods made it virtually impossible to live in the coastal area. Terps were submerged and the inhabitants began to retreat. Early in the 5th century the floods diminished and new settlers arrived, using the remnants of the terps as a base for new terps and mounds. Farm terps became terp villages, sometimes even cities, such as Leeuwarden and Dokkum. The Wadden coast became one of the most densely populated areas in Europe, comparable to Paris in those days. And despite many terps being dug away in the 19th and 20th century, countless ‘Dutch mountains’ with their tough little Roman churches still dominate the skyline of this vast and ancient cultural landscape.
It also demonstrates how water safety and water management have advanced over time. All along the Wadden coast you’ll come across the names of scientists who were involved: streets, locks and pumping stations were all named after them. Willem Loré (1679 - 1744) is one of those names. This mathematician made a revolutionary design for dike construction: wider and with a more gradual slope. These dikes proved to be better equipped to withstand the waves and were even cheaper to construct.