During the night of October 11-12, 1634, a raging storm destroyed the coastline of North Friesland. In a few hours, the flood accompanying this storm, swept away complete villages, hamlets and even islands from the face of the earth.
About 15,000 people lost their lives that disastrous night ,a pivotal event in human history within this region and beyond.
Nordstrand Island - where more than 6,000 people drowned- suffered the most devastation.
The tremendous power of the water destroyed about 50 miles of the coast between Nordstrand Island and the Danish border. At Eiderstedt, the area south of Nordstrand Island, 2,106 people drowned, despite being protected by dikes 18-20 feet high. Inside Klixbüll's church, people marked the water level on the wall: 14 feet above ground level.
This was the second great flood in the history of the North Frisian region. In 1362, a similar flood, known as the “Grote Manndränke”, ravaged the same area, but little is known about that disaster.
The early years of the 17th century had not been easy on the inhabitants, either. In 1603, bubonic plague diminished the population of the whole area; and, in 1618, the Thirty Years War brought hunger and poverty to the region.
In 1630, the government hired Dutchman Jan Adriaansz Leeghwater to supervise a land-reclamation project. The 1634 flood wiped out four years' hard labor of his workers in a few hours, breaking existing dikes in hundreds of places or completely washing them away. As the water withdrew from the fields, the salt stayed behind and made the fields useless. The results of the flood were disastrous for the economy of the entire North Frisian coast.
All these aspects and the traumatic experiences of the flood paralyzed the spirit of enterprise of most survivors. Many moved away, a large number of them to Holland.

The Isle of Nordstrand before the flood of 1634
The red lines indicate, what is left of the old Nordstrand Island: the present-day island Pellworm and the peninsula's Nordstrandischmoor and Nordstrand

Mind that the isle had been attacked several times before. Especially earlier floods of 1164 and 1334 had changed the shape of Nordstrand

In the northern part of Nordstrand Island, dikes were never rebuilt. Pellworm Island and the remaining part of Nordstrand Island got their new dikes step by step. Duke Frederick III wanted strong dikes; he needed craftsmanship and money, so he hired the Dutch to do the job. The Dutch dike builder, Quirinus Indervelde, had the craftsmanship, and his Dutch shareholders had the funds. They were hired to regain the land; and, as a reward, they were allowed to own it.
The Duke gave the shareholders the right to rule the island, and to control the jurisdiction and the police. They were also allowed to practice the Roman Catholic religion within the Lutheran Schleswig-Holstein area. Indervelde had to hire hundreds of Dutch dike workers from Brabant, the southern part of the Republic. The Nordstranders did not want to help, because they knew the Dutch would own the land once it was reclaimed.
Twenty years after the flood, in 1654, the dikes around the first polder (reclaimed land), Alterkoog, were finished. In 1657 and 1663, the polders Osterkoog and Trindermarschkoog followed.
The family grave of the Indervelde family is in a small Catholic church in Odenbüll, built in 1662. The last member of the Indervelde family, Quirinus Fransiscus Indervelde, left the island due to a religious conflict.
The Catholic Church on the Nordstrand Island was under the jurisdiction of the archbishopric of Utrecht. In 1723 the Old Catholics turned their back to the Mother Church because the Pope had excommunicated the new archbishop of Utrecht and all his priests. This conflict split up the Dutch community on Nordstrand Island, too. The majority, the Old Catholics, claimed the small church as their own. In order to win back power, Quirinus Fransiscus started a new land-reclamation project, but it failed. The dikes of Christiaanskoog were of bad quality and did not survive the first storm. Indervelde went broke and left the island without a trace.
Most of the Dutch investors and dike builders stayed on Nordstrand Island and, until 1870, the sermons in the Old Catholic church were delivered in Dutch. Even today, the archbishopric of Utrecht owns about 100 acres of land on the island.

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Land reclamations, performed by the Dutch and Flamands did not only take place at the Nordstrand Isle but also in Eidersted and the Stapelholm area as in all the regions and spots you can trace at the map on the left. Dutch knowledge and expertise at the field of land reclamation wasn't limited to this area though: the Fens in England also are widely known. There are, however, much more places where the Dutch were active. Dutch/Flemish hydraulic engineers-and their families- have been active in Europe mainly from the 16th- up till the 18th century.

Click here to see the places all over Europe where the Dutch and Flamands have been active in the field of land reclamation.