Wadden Sea History

While it is well-established and commonly agreed upon that fruits and nuts such as apples, plums and hazelnuts were of little importance for human subsistence in the Dutch-German salt-marsh region, as yet no systematic review and critical evaluation of finds has been compiled. This contribution fills this void, and thus allows future claims with respect to this topic to be supported by clear figures. In addition to the edible juicy fruits and nuts, we discuss the potential of edible dry plant seeds and fruits, as well as vegetative plant parts. The little information available from samples dated between AD 1200 and 1600 points to major changes in that phase, and appears to indicate the onset of a segregation between rural, urban, and monastic sites. We argue that this phase deserves special attention in future research and that this calls for more intensive cooperation between archaeologists and historians

On a traditional signaling post called 'lawei', used in coastal areas as a sign for navvies to start work at low tide or to stop work at high tide. The word 'lawei' refers to the clamor made when the work stopped or, alternatively, when a navvies' strike began.

The transport system between the North Sea and the Baltic plays a formative role in Medieval and Early Modern North European history. The Jutland peninsula was a major obstacle to transport, with the Reef of the Devil’s Horn and the Scaw causing the loss of many ships and men. The ships going all the way past the Scaw through the Sound were known as ‘ummeland’ (‘around the country’) ships. Little wonder that all but the most seaworthy ships rather than going ummeland chose to anchor in the Wadden Sea and load and unload for landward transportation across the Jutland peninsula.
There were several competing landward links – from Hamburg-Lübeck in the south to Ribe-Kolding in the north. The paper will call attention to the importance of these competing transportation systems in the regional history of West Jutland. In addition, it will sketch some developments both in the relative use of Wadden Sea roads and in the relative proportion of reloading versus ummeland shipping.
The suggestion is that Ribe experienced a high tide in shipping between 1450 and 1550 marked by the formation of the skipper guild and royal interest in harbour facilities, and that the increased dominance of three-masted Dutch ships in the Baltic finally obliviated the importance of landward reloading in the next
century.

Analysis of a five-month farmworkers strike in the Oldambt district (the Netherlands) with 5000 participants, Mai to October 1929. History and aftermath of social conflicts. Agrarian capitalism in a coastal marsh area close to the Wadden Sea.
Report for the Dutch Open Air Museum in Arnhem, 2000.

In the dominant policy discourse on the Wadden SeaS region, 'experience' (Dutch: beleving) is currently a key term, used for instance in the recently published Wadden Sea 'experience map'. The basic idea behind it is that by staging a series of experiences of the authenticity of cultural heritage at different sites and venues along the Wadden Sea coast,tourists can be attracted which would benefit the local economies. In this article, the author weighs and describes what consequences this implementation of 'the experience economy' (Gillmore and Pine) has for the transfer and survival of regional cultural heritage. With a focus on Frisian cultural heritage and therein contrasting a postmodern, poststructuralist, neoliberal perspective with a modern, cultural nationalist stance, the author demonstrates how the experience economy does not value all types of cultural heritage equally. Tangible and material types are more prone to touristic commodification than immaterial assets like language and history, which in turn are the main ethnic markers in the nationalist version of Frisian culture. In the experience economy, the Frisian language tends to become a 'signal' language, only referring to Frisian in a symbolical way without actually using it. As to history, the author observes a similar process, i.e. a remystification of medieval Frisian history. This is,somewhat paradoxically, at odds with the dominant deconstructionist academic discourse on Frisian history but can be explained perfectly as part of the experience economy. This article can also be read as an elucidation of the question whether a regional or minority culture can be turned into a series of profitable commodities without eroding its 'real' authenticity. The author leaves this open to public and political debate.