The history of The Netherlands is central to many of the stories I am writing so let me take a moment to give some geographical and cultural background. “Netherlands” means low lying country and that is quite the understatement, as approximately 2500 square miles consist of reclaimed land. This reclamation was made possible by perhaps the greatest of the Dutch’s ingenuity – control and management, from medieval times to present day, of the waters of the sea, lakes marshes and rivers.
The reclaimed lands are known as polders as seen below, and they are often protected by dikes – more on this in a moment:
As you can surmise, this was no easy task, and the weather made sure to test the Dutch’s spirit, fortitude and resilience with catastrophic floods It is still a daily fight to control the water.
During the early years, manpower was used to dig and dredge and drain the land. Soon the iconic windmill was put into use to pump out the water so the land could be farmed:
The above windmill is part of a network of working windmills at the reconstructed Kinderdijk-Elshout, which is a Unesco Workd Heritage site. I will recount my visit there in a future post.
Unfortunately, even modern steam, diesel or electric pumps are not enough – they don’t keep the water from surging back. First line of defense for the Netherlands? Dams and dikes. First, a little geography. The Netherlands is bounded by the North Sea in the north and west, Germany in the east, and Belgium in the south.
More than half of the total area of the country, which is its most developed, is not usually higher than about 3 feet above sea level. Almost half of it lies below sea level. The Dutch had to construct structures that prevent pumped out water from returning and also control the actual levels of the water. Dams and dikes.
DAMS – A dam is built to hold water back by stopping or slowing the flow of the waters they are built in to prevent flooding..
DIKES – A dike is a structure that separates land from water. A dike can be a wall or an embankment or a hill of built up land that holds the water back.
It’s a bit confusing, I know. What is the difference between a dike and a dam?
- a dike has water on only one side – a dam has water on both sides
- dikes run parallel to the water to keep it on one side, while dams cut perpendicularly across the water to hold back some or all of the water on one side.
- the dike protects the land behind it from flooding by its closure
- dams retain water
Dams
Dikes
N.B. After a considerable amount of time researching these structures I have learned that in most cases the two words are used interchangeably. I am sure the Dutch would not agree.
In any event, the Dutch began in the early 11 century to build these structures in an effort to control the water Nature had other ideas.
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