Rungholt was a low-lying settlement in North Frisia, in what was then the Danish Duchy of Schleswig. The area today lies in Germany. Rungholt was flooded, with massive erosion, when a storm tide (known as Grote Mandrenke or Den Store Manddrukning) hit the coast on 15 or 16 January 1362. [1] [2]
Rungholt was situated on the island of Strand, which was largely destroyed by the Burchardi Flood of 1634; remaining fragments include the Nordstrand peninsula and the islets of Hallig Südfall, Pellworm and Nordstrandischmoor, while the rest now forms tidal flats in the surrounding Wadden Sea.
In 1921, ruins believed to represent Rungholt were discovered around Hallig Südfall: wells, trenches and part of a tidal lock. [3] [4] [5] In June 2023, the German Research Foundation announced that researchers had confirmed this identification, and had already mapped 10 square kilometers of the area including key features such as a church. [6] [7] [8] [9] Detailed archeological investigations of the remains of buildings, dykes and a harbour have been published. [1] [2]
Documents about Rungholt mostly date from much later times (16th century). Archaeologists think Rungholt was an important town and port. It might have contained up to 500 houses, with about 3,000 people. Findings indicate trade in agricultural products and possibly amber. [3] [4]
The great storm known as the Grote Mandrenke (Store Manddrukning), sometimes also named after the saint Marcellus, occurred on 15 or 16 January 1362. [3] Estimates put the number of deaths at around 25,000. [10] Possibly 30 settlements were destroyed, and the coastline shifted east, leaving formerly inhabited land in the tidal Wadden Sea. [4] [5]
The vulnerability of the settlement to the storm tide has been attributed to agricultural development:
"It was like a natural landscape of peat bogs and fenland. It was very uninhabitable, and they completely colonized it. They completely changed the landscape," ... "Once you remove all this peat and get the water out, you have very, very rich soils that are perfect for agriculture [but] "with rising sea levels and increasing storminess, one day these dikes they built were not sufficient enough, and these settlements just drowned." [6]
Sometimes referred to as the "Atlantis of the North Sea", the Rungholt of legend was a large, rich town, with the catastrophe supposedly a divine punishment for the sins of its inhabitants. [3]
Impressed by the fate of the town, the relics, and not least the legends' excessive descriptions, the German poet Detlev von Liliencron wrote the 1882 poem "Trutz, Blanke Hans" about the lost town, which begins: Heut bin ich über Rungholt gefahren, die Stadt ging unter vor sechshundert Jahren. ("Today I traveled over Rungholt; the town sank 600 years ago."). [11]
The Sinbadventurers (German: Die Hamburger Sindbadauken) is an opera for children composed by Benjamin Gordon with a libretto by Francis Hüsers. [12] It was commissioned by the Hamburg State Opera and was first performed on February 8, 2015. In the opera, three children set out to discover the lost gold of Rungholt. In the Interlude before the final act, the main character, Lotte, tries desperately to warn the citizens of Rungholt of their impending destruction by reciting verses from Liliencron’s ballad.
German singer Achim Reichel put Liliencron's poem to music on his 1977 album Regenballade .[ citation needed ]
German band Santiano released a song called "Rungholt" in their 2015 CD "Von Liebe, Tod und Freiheit". It also includes verses from von Liliencron's poem.[ citation needed ]
Theodor Storm mentions Rungholt in his novella Eine Halligfahrt. [3]
Christian Kracht mentions Rungholt in his novella Faserland. [3]
The Danish writer Dorothea Petersen mentions Rungholt in her historical novel Havets rytter. [13]
Ursula Hegi mentions Rungholt in her 2020 novel The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls. [14]
Local myth has it that one can still hear the church bells of Rungholt ringing underwater when sailing through the area on a calm night. [3]
Year 1362 (MCCCLXII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
The Wadden Sea is an intertidal zone in the southeastern part of the North Sea. It lies between the coast of northwestern continental Europe and the range of low-lying Frisian Islands, forming a shallow body of water with tidal flats and wetlands. It has a high biological diversity and is an important area for both breeding and migrating birds. In 2009, the Dutch and German parts of the Wadden Sea were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List and the Danish part was added in June 2014.
Sylt is an island in northern Germany, part of Nordfriesland district, Schleswig-Holstein, well known for the distinctive shape of its shoreline. It belongs to the North Frisian Islands and is the largest island in North Frisia. The northernmost island of Germany, it is known for its tourist resorts, notably Westerland, Kampen and Wenningstedt-Braderup, as well as for its 40-kilometre-long (25-mile) sandy beach. It is frequently covered by the media in connection with its exposed situation in the North Sea and its ongoing loss of land during storm tides. Since 1927, Sylt has been connected to the mainland by the Hindenburgdamm causeway. In later years, it has been a resort for the German jet set and tourists in search of occasional celebrity sightings.
Nordfriesland, also known as North Frisia, is the northernmost district of Germany, part of the state of Schleswig-Holstein. It includes almost all of traditional North Frisia, as well as adjacent parts of the Schleswig Geest to the east and Stapelholm to the south, and is bounded by the districts of Schleswig-Flensburg and Dithmarschen, the North Sea and the Danish county of South Jutland. The district is called Kreis Nordfriesland in German, Kreis Noordfreesland in Low German, Kris Nordfraschlönj in Mooring North Frisian, Kreis Nuurdfresklun in Fering North Frisian and Nordfrislands amt in Danish.
The North Frisian Islands are the Frisian Islands off the coast of North Frisia.
Husum is the capital of the Kreis (district) Nordfriesland in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The town was the birthplace of the novelist Theodor Storm, who coined the epithet "the grey town by the sea". It is also the home of the annual international piano festival Raritäten der Klaviermusik founded in 1986.
Storm tides of the North Sea are coastal floods associated with extratropical cyclones crossing over the North Sea, the severity of which is affected by the shallowness of the sea and the orientation of the shoreline relative to the storm's path, as well as the timing of tides. The water level can rise to more than 5 metres (17 ft) above the normal tide as a result of storm tides.
Föhr is one of the North Frisian Islands on the German coast of the North Sea. It is part of the Nordfriesland district in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. Föhr is the second-largest North Sea island of Germany and a popular destination for tourists. A town and eleven distinct municipalities are located on the island. The climate is oceanic with moderate winters and relatively cool summers.
is a peninsula and former island in North Frisia on the North Sea coast of Germany. It is part of the Nordfriesland district in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. Its area is 50 km² and its population is 2,300. Nordstrand has two municipalities, Nordstrand and smaller Elisabeth-Sophien-Koog, which are part of the Amt Nordsee-Treene.
The Frisian Islands, also known as the Wadden Islands or the Wadden Sea Islands, form an archipelago at the eastern edge of the North Sea in northwestern Europe, stretching from the northwest of the Netherlands through Germany to the west of Denmark. The islands shield the mudflat region of the Wadden Sea from the North Sea.
Norderney is one of the seven populated East Frisian Islands off the North Sea coast of Germany.
Saint Marcellus's flood or Grote Mandrenke was an intense extratropical cyclone, coinciding with a new moon, which swept across the British Isles, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark around 16 January 1362, causing at least 25,000 deaths. The storm tide is also called the "Second St. Marcellus flood" because it peaked on 16 January, the feast day of St. Marcellus. A previous "First St. Marcellus flood" had drowned 36,000 people along the coasts of West Friesland and Groningen on 16 January 1219.
The Burchardi flood was a storm tide that struck the North Sea coast of North Frisia, Dithmarschen and southwest Jutland on the night between 11 and 12 October 1634. Overrunning dikes, it shattered the coastline and caused thousands of deaths and catastrophic material damage. Much of the island of Strand washed away, forming the islands Nordstrand, Pellworm and several halligen.
Strand was an island on the west coast of Nordfriesland in Schleswig, which was a fiefdom of the Danish crown. The area now belongs to Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany.
Büsum is a fishing and tourist town in the district of Dithmarschen, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the North Sea coast, approx. 18 km southwest of Heide.
Ravenser Odd, also spelled Ravensrodd, was a port in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, during the medieval period, built on the sandbanks at the mouth of the Humber estuary.
The Uthland-Frisian house, a variation of the Geestharden house, is a type of farmhouse that, for centuries, dominated the North Frisian Uthlande, that is the North Frisian Islands, the Halligen and the marshlands of northwest Germany.
The Lüttmoorsiel-Nordstrandischmoor island railway, also called the Loren Railway, is a German, 600 mm narrow gauge island railway through the North Frisian Wadden Sea from Beltringharder Koog on the mainland to the Hallig of Nordstrandischmoor.
Südfall is a small island in the Wadden Sea off the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, one of the ten German Hallig islands. It has a permanent population of two people. It covers an area of 0.56 square kilometres (0.22 sq mi) and is administratively part of Pellworm Municipality.
Lundenberg Hundred was a mediaeval hundred located in the southern part of North Frisia in the Danish region of Southern Schleswig, part of the Frisian Uthlande. Lundenberg Hundred was one of the so-called Five Hundreds or Strand Hundreds on the island, the others being Edoms Hundred, Beltring Hundred, Southern Goes Hundred, and Pellworm Hundred. It encompassed the southeastern part of the former island of Strand, between what are now the peninsulae of Nordstrand and Eiderstedt.
Researchers find what they believe is the central church of Rungholt, the 'Atlantis of the North Sea'
Media related to Rungholt at Wikimedia Commons
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