"We have lived for centuries on our small island Schokland in the Zuiderzee, doing our daily fishing and handcraft. We are a few small villages, with churches in the centre. But terrible floods are threatening us always, and now, in 1859, our government wants us to leave. Only a few people are allowed to stay behind to work at the lighthouse. We have lost our fight against the water."
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Province of Flevoland
"It's 1916, we now live on the shores of the Zuiderzee. We thought we were safe, but a devastating storm hit our coast, our villages and harbours. The water flooded large areas, and killed hundreds of people. Our houses and industries are destroyed. We’ll probably need to leave again. In these parts of the land, the water is our foe."
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Province of Flevoland
"I, Cornelis Lely, engineer and Minister of Water Management, have a bold plan. If we don't do something about that Zuiderzee, we will lose ever more land. We need to fight her, to keep her out. I made grand plan! We will build a large dyke enclosing the Zuiderzee, and turn it into an inland freshwater lake. The rough waters are behind us, and we will create new land for our people!"
In addition to taming the wild Zuiderzee, the Netherlands needed to produce more food, and new agriculture land was more than welcome. The sea clay in these new polders would be excellent for agriculture. Both reasons justified the immense amount of money needed to develop this project. Of course, many workers were happy to have a job for years!
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Province of Flevoland
"I am a worker here at the Noordoostpolder, I come from a family of farmers, but there is no future on the farm for me. I have to work hard. It is a tough job, but I have to persist in order to get a farm. But now that we have built the dykes, we will gain new land! The work is hard. Hundreds of men work from sunrise until dawn to make the ditches. The engineers have planned and calculated; now we need to turn it into reality."
[Drum sound] [Seagull sound] [Music] A great deal of digging was needed to construct the Flevoland polder. It is like digging on the beach, but then on a very large scale. With the advent of the steam engine, in approximately 1850 the old plan to close off the Zuiderzee was re-examined. This plan, formulated by Dr. Lely, formed the basis of more than 200,000 hectares of new land in the heart of the Netherlands. The dikes consist of heavy materials. There are machines, but much of the work is done manually. Knowledge of the reclaimed seabed is necessary in order to analyse the load-bearing capacity of the places where the dikes are to be constructured. When one knows where the dikes should be raised, then the real work begins. Dikes such as the Afsluitdijk (Enclosure Dam) are made of boulder clay, which provides a firm and solid basis. They are then covered with basalt blocks. Dredgers, sand suckers, strong tugs are enlisted. [Sound of construction] Important people are the dike workers, the fascine mat workers, the slab layers and stone masons. When the dikes are finished and the land is drained, it is given the required layput and infrastructure. In the Wieringermeer and Noordoost Polder, this occurred primarily by means of muscle power. And many people are needed for this. Experienced labourers, young farmers' sons, and later people hiding from the Nazis. They stream into the Noordoost Polder, armed with boots and a shovel. Due to their efforts, an impassable bare surface changes into fertile land. [Music] {Zuiderzeemuseum.nl/ automariek}
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Province of Flevoland
Prosperity
People
11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
02 Zero Hunger