If, in America, your family is of Dutch origin and came to America in the 17th century, it is likely that they settled in upstate New York, or New Holland, as it was then called. It is likely that they settled in the colony of Rensselaerswyck, and from there, like so many other families, spread out across America in search of new opportunities. There names were Dutch, Nordstrand, Van Nordstrand, Van Husem, and a thousand others, spelled this way and that. They considered themselves Dutch, Frisians to be specific, and they for the most part came from a place on the coast of the Jutland Peninsula. They came because a flood took place destroying their homes and their families.
One such person was Volkje Juriaens Nordstrand Van Husem, though this is not her story. This is the story of all those who came. Volkje was but one of thousands. One girl, a teenager who lived with her parents and her younger sister and was caught up in events.
Halfway up the west coast of the Jutland Peninsula is small island called Nordstrand in German, Noordstrant in Dutch. Today, it is part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, once Danish, and once 300 years ago populated, in the main, by the Dutch who had come to reclaim the sea.
Today the island comprises 50 square kilometers of land, about half the size of Disney World. Once it encompassed four times that area and included the smaller island of Pell, and even smaller island of Hooge, further out into the Waddensee. The area is surrounded by tidal flats and marshes. Access to Nordstrand is from the ancient port of Husum, and to Pell island, only by boat. Winters are gray, and that is why Husum is called the Gray City by the Sea, a name given to it by novelist Theodor Storm. Nordstrand, being mostly farms, had no nicknames, though one can by extension call it gray. Storms tear through the island every season of the year, with the sky being gray for days on end. Winter brings the whipping winds off the cold North Sea, winds arise in the spring, and calm finally in the summer, unless a storm unsettles the beauty of the farmlands and the grass in the marshes. When the storms come where do the birds go?
on the night between 11 and 12 October 1634, a storm tide struck along the entire the North Sea coast, paying particular fury to the island of Nordstrand.
Overrunning dikes, it caused upwards of 15,000 deaths and damage on a scale of Noah's Flood. When it was over, and historians had time to take in its significance, they gave it a name, The Burchardi flood or second Grote Mandrenke and simply "Erschrecklichewasserfluth," the terrible flood.
A contemporary, Peter Sax, who witnessed the storm from the relative safety of Koldenbüttel on the mainland, described the scenario as follows:
" … at six o’clock at night the Lord God began to fulminate with wind and rain from the east, at seven He turned the wind to the southwest and let it blow so strong that hardly any man could walk or stand, at eight and nine all dikes were already smitten.
…
The Lord God [sent] thunder, rain, hail lightning and such a powerful wind that the Earth’s foundation was shaken… at ten o’clock everything was over".
The dikes were destroyed, the houses in the shallow marshlands and even those on artificial dwelling hills were flooded. The towns and the churches were also destroyed. Nothing escaped the storm and the water.
Jan Leeghwater, a Dutch hydraulic engineer, tasked with the land reclamation project, wrote a report afterwards.
"In the evening a great storm and bad weather rose from the southwest out of the sea.
… The wind began to blow so hard that no sleep could touch our eyes.
When we had been lying in bed for about an hour my son said to me, ‘Father, I feel water dripping into my face’.
The waves were rising up at the sea dike and onto the roof of the house.
It was a very frightening sound."
Father and son took refuge in a manor house on higher ground along with 38 others.
The wind turned somewhat to the northwest and blew plainly against the
manor, so hard and stiff as I had never experienced in my life.
On a strong door on the western side of the building the lock bars sprang out of the posts due to the sea waves, so that the water doused the [hearth] fire and ran into the corridors and over my knee boots, about 13 feet higher than the May floods of the old land…
At the northern edge of the house which stood close to the tidal channel, the earth was washed away from underneath the house…Therefore the house, the hallway and the floor burst into pieces…
It seemed that the manor and all those inside were doomed to be washed off the dike.
In the morning, … the tents and huts that had been standing all
across the estate were washed away, thirty-six or thirty-seven in
number, with all the people who had been inside.
Great sea ships were standing high upon the dike as I have seen myself. In Husum, several ships were standing upon the highway. I have also ridden there along the beach and have seen wondrous
things, many different dead beasts, beams of houses, smashed wagons and
an awful lot of wood, straw and stubbles. And I have also seen many a human body who had drowned.
