THE FLOODED VILLAGE OF MANDØ Leo Oorschot
[email protected] www.mandoe.eu www.verdronkengeschiedenis.nl april 2009 1 78 The flooded village of Mandø The new village of Mandø 2 Preface This project is dedicated to the exploration and Especially after reading the work of Poul Holm about research on the flooded village of Mandø. Mandø is a new interpretation of coastal occupations and one of the small Northern Frisian Islands in the Danish settlements. Nowhere is the landscape as influential on Wadden Sea located between Fanø and Romø. everyday life as in the Danish Wadden Sea. The research is based on a geological survey and a Storms, winds and floods regularly reshape the islands literature study. I inherited the literature, maps and by the laws of nature. The islands’ inhabitants have tales about the island from my family, who originate always had to adapt themselves and seek safe places from there. to live. Villages, farms, dikes and hills where people Most historians and archaeologists spend hardly any settled were often washed away and had to be rebuilt. energy on Mandø because the general idea is that The remains of the village are buried under a layer of nobody could ever have been so stupid as to live there, clay on Gammel Mandø. except if you were desperate, a monk or on the run. This is because the island was unsafe to live on. After completing the study, it can now be said that the All of the ancient towns were built a certain distance evolution of this settlement was accidental, blind, and from the sea.