Life on the island

THE INHABITANTS OF THE LOW-LYING ISLAND OF NORDSTRANDISCHMOOR OFF THE COAST OF NORTH FRIESIA ARE OFTEN CUT OFF FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD FOR DAYS AT A TIME. STILL, THEY COULD NEVER CONCEIVE OF LIVING ON THE MAINLAND.

Ruth Hartwig-Kruse cranks the trolley’s diesel engine to life. Her son Hendrik releases the brake, and the wooden bench on wheels starts rolling. Up the dike it clambers, with a truckload of provisions in tow. “This is the time of year for the flood tides and sometimes they cut us off for weeks from the outside world,” says Ruth. The trolley carries everything, from crates of bottles to a new sofa, to paying guests. Traveling along a narrow stone causeway, the journey takes a quarter of an hour across the mudflats of the Wadden Sea. At high tide the rails are under water. On the horizon are five houses built on four mounds: this is Nordstrandischmoor, one of ten German islets—the ancient name is holms—in North Friesland.

The mudflats give way to salt meadows striped with ditches. Ruth slows the trolley to a halt at Neuwarft. A warft is a man-made earth mound, like those on which the houses stand. The rolling stock is safe here from storm and flood. Ruth’s husband Hans-Hermann is there with the tractor, waiting to take the family to their mound at the western end of the island. Ruth and Hans-Hermann live there with their children Ann-Kathrin (9), Hendrik (7) and Erik (6) and Ruth’s mother Frieda.

While there were once 120 people living on the holm, there are only 18 now. There is no doctor, no supermarket, not even a corner shop. The single inn is open only in summer. In the winter season the daily papers arrive only three times a week, and not at all when “the land is under,” as the locals refer to the regular flood tides. About 40 times a year the sea swamps the holm. Then only the four mounds protrude above the raging waters. The holms are the product of the “Grote Mandränke,” a huge storm surge in the year 1362 which overwhelmed the wealthy coastal town of Rungholt and seven other villages, dragging 7,600 people to their deaths and washing away a major share of the land. The first holms were what the tempest left behind. In 1634 the second “Grote Mandränke” struck the former island of Strand: some 6,000 people died and the horseshoe-shaped island was washed away, leaving only a few small patches of land behind, among them a ridge of moorland known as “Lüttmoor.” Later, some of the survivors of the catastrophe began to settle here. In time, Lüttmoor, the little moor, became the holm Nordstrandischmoor. Ruth’s family has lived here since the 17th century.

A SCHOOL WITH TWO PUPILS
“When the floods come, we drive the livestock into the barn and barricade the windows. Then we wait until the water subsides,” Ruth explains. Then the school on the neighboring mound is out of reach. But that doesn’t mean no lessons at all, as teacher Erik Lorenzen sends work for the children by phone or e-mail.

It’s still dark when Ann-Kathrin and Hendrik set off next morning. “Come on, we’re late,” Ann-Kathrin calls in a strongly accented German common to this area. They peddle their bicycles into the teeth of a biting salt wind. All around them is nothing but low, wet grassland. No trees, not even a bush. Just sheep. In the schoolhouse, the pair’s muddy shoes stand in isolation in the hallway. The silence is eerie. No school friends come crowding up to Ann-Kathrin as she enters the classroom. Only Lorenzen, her teacher, is there to welcome them. Ann-Kathrin is class three. Hendrik—class two—sits across from her. Lorenzen eases himself into an armchair. Hendrik stands beside him while Ann-Kathrin kneels on a leather chair and peers over his shoulder. The teacher opens a book, adjusts his spectacles and in a deep voice reads a poem by James Krüss, a native of the island of Helgoland. Lorenzen has a beard and bushy eyebrows and looks more the part of a fairy tale figure come to life than a schoolteacher. The school is his home. Physical education takes place on blue mats in his living room.

It is time now for Hendrik’s arithmetic. Lorenzen sets him a task, then rolls his office chair over to class three to explain the intricacies of hyphenation to Ann-Kathrin, who’s doing German. “The great advantage of our school is individual attention, if need be I just adapt the curriculum,” says Lorenzen with a twinkle in his eye. Hendrik looks dreamily out of the window. Lorenzen notices at once and springs a surprise arithmetic test. “I forgot something,” exclaims Hendrik as Lorenzen goes to pick up his paper: “I didn’t write my name.” Lorenzen laughs.

The school on Nordstrandischmoor is both elementary and junior high school, the high school is on the mainland. “Either the children have to leave home at age ten and go to an expensive boarding school, or the families move to the mainland. But to preserve the coast and in the interests of tourism, we need young families here,” declares Lorenzen. That’s why the State of Schleswig-Holstein supports the island schools despite the cost. The classroom is also the place for religious services when the minister from Nordstrand visits the holm from time to time. Once there was a church, until “Blanker Hans,” as the stormy North Sea is called, destroyed it for the fourth time.

STONEWALLS OPPOSE THE FLOOD
In the meantime, father Hans-Hermann is dressed for work, in overalls, jacket and rubber boots. Like all the male inhabitants of the holm, apart from teacher Lorenzen, he is employed in coastal protection. It’s eleven years now since he met Ruth, who grew up on the holm. There was no question as to who moved in with whom: “It wouldn’t have worked on the mainland, you couldn’t uproot my wife. So I had to learn something new.” He used to work as a salesman in a do-it-yourself store, “But with the tides, I couldn’t get to work on time.” Today Hans-Hermann and the other men are working on a “hedgehog,” a stone embankment intended to prevent the holm from being eroded by the sea. “This is typical winter work, in summer we’re mostly out in the boats, working on the fascines,” explains foreman Gerd-Walter Siefert. A fascine in this context comprises two rows of timber stakes with bundles and sheaves of straw, branches and brushwood stuffed in-between. As the tide recedes on the ebb, mud is left behind, and sooner or later land is reclaimed from the sea.

The federal state of Schleswig-Holstein invests over € 4 million each year protecting the holms. A lot of money to spend on little islands that are facing a difficult future of climate change and rising sea levels. But the holms are important, as they act as break waters. Without them, the storm damage to the mainland would be far greater. They are also a symbol of the man-made landscape. Hans-Hermann says of his backbreaking work in wind and weather: “It’s a wonderful thing—we earn money for protecting our environment.”

A moped approaches the mound. It’s the mail. August Glienke always takes the trolley to the mainland to fetch letters and parcels. There is no post office on the island, just a mailbox hanging on a fence with the inscription “Collection times dependent on tides.” Glienke also has two other jobs: on behalf of the coastal protection authority he rids the dikes of moles, and in the summer he is landlord of the “Halligkrogs,” the only inn on Nordstrandischmoor.

Around 25,000 day visitors flock to the holm each year, some crossing the mudflats on foot at low tide, while others arrive by ship at high tide. In July and August Glienke actually employs two assistants to keep the tourist throng supplied with specialty fish dishes, homemade cakes and local beverages: the main ingredient of his “Pharisäer” and “Tote Tante” being a good tot of rum. In autumn and winter he enjoys the peace and quiet, opening only on request. Lorenzen the teacher is fascinated by the winter storms: “I can feel the sheer brute force of nature. It has an existential quality.” One of his predecessors lost his life to the power of the elements. One day in 1907, August Thode set out too late on his return from the mainland. He lost his way, and as his wife watched through a telescope, he was dragged to his death down one of the tidal gullies in the mudflats.

BALLET IS OFTEN WASHED OUT
Many people could not survive in this “supposed wasteland,” believes Lorenzen, a bachelor, as one is left utterly to one’s own devices here. “It is important to compensate for the external barrenness with inner strength, or you will suffer the consequences.” His pupils need other stimuli, however. By the time Hans-Hermann comes home, Ruth and the children are gone to the mainland, where Ruth fetches the car from its garage. She has to really step on it to get Ann- Kathrin and Hendrik to the Scouts meeting on time. But in winter the children often have to do without. Ann-Kathrin pulls a face: “I couldn‘t go to ballet once from November to the middle of January, because we were cut off every Tuesday.” Yet it is precisely this unpredictability that her mother adores: “Nature calls the tune here.We consciously experience every season of the year.”

THE STORM IN THE LIVING ROOM
Ruth’s mother Frieda, 79, has lived all her life on the holm. Until the 1970s there was no power or piped water. But there were always storm surges. “The most awful was the flood of 1936. The waves ripped away part of the mound and smashed in the house door. Our animals were left standing in water, and they got sick and died.” A bitter blow for a family that lived entirely on the income from its cattle at the time. Forty years later another surge of equal severity tore the wallpaper from the walls. “The water and the mud ruined everything. I thought, that’s it, I’m leaving!” relates Grandma Frieda.

But then, she decided to stay. When a severe storm surge is forecast, she stays awake, as she did during the Kyrill hurricane in January. After a while, Frieda got tired of waiting. “I’m off to bed,” she said to her daughter. “Wake me when it gets wet in here.”

In the end it was just a “harmless flood.” Nothing special for the little mounds amidst the open sea.

(Text: Christian Schnohr, Photos: Lukas Coch)