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    The Dutch town that used to be an island
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    The Dutch town that used to be an island


    The Dutch town that used to be an island

    Posted by vladgrinch

    View 42 Comments

    42 Comments

    1. vladgrinch on

      Urk was once a small, isolated island in the Zuiderzee, surrounded by open water and dependent almost entirely on fishing.

      For centuries, it sat alone in the sea. That changed in the 20th century, when the Netherlands began one of the largest land reclamation projects ever attempted. The Zuiderzee was sealed off from the North Sea, turning it into a lake, and the seabed around Urk was gradually drained.

      By the 1940s, the water that had defined the island was gone, replaced by farmland. Urk suddenly found itself surrounded by land, connected to the mainland for the first time in its history.

      The transformation was part of the Zuiderzee Works, one of the largest engineering projects ever carried out.

    2. sambare on

      The Dutch, wherever they see a large body of water: “ew, gross, cover it with dirt!” 😆

    4. kamikazekaktus on

      I first thought the top picture was a microscope photo of some sort of amoaeba or similar single celled organism

    5. DivusSentinal on

      Fun fact. To this day the people say they live ON urk, instead of IN urk; as they still cling to the fact they were once an island.

    7. Densmiegd on

      It would be better for humanity if they made that part of land into sea instead of the sea into land.

    10. K-Shrizzle on

      I live in Boston and I only recently learned that half this city is built on fill. It blows my mind to think of the logistics of transporting and dumping enough dirt to literally fill the ocean and build on top of it. My own apartment is likely built on this land

    11. greekscientist on

      The Dutch reclaimed a lot of land, and some considered also of reclaiming Markermeer (west of Flevoland)

    12. Oalka on

      All the other kings said I were DAFT to build a city in a swamp, but I did it anyway, just to show em.

    15. Sremsky on

      I’ve heard Dutch people call them Ork and sing a song “Urk, Urk, you eat soup with a fork” lol

    16. blueskyedclouds on

      Ah Urk, where the beaches are Colombian white and the family trees are circular

    17. Khorneth on

      Funnily enough this place is a huge meme in the Netherlands. Generally, the jokes come down to this being a place of inbred farmers, anti-vaxxers, and nutjobs. It has been on the news for incidents which didn’t really shine a good light on them. It has a reputation.

    31. Nothing_F4ce on

      One thing I don’t get is how is this reclaimed land good for agriculture and not full of salt?

    33. kayakhomeless on

      The [NYC neighborhood of Marble Hill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Hill,_Manhattan) is pretty similar. It’s just a normal boring neighborhood attached to the Bronx mainland, but it’s still technically part of manhattan, despite being separated from manhattan by the Harlem River.

      The river use to go north of the neighborhood, but a canal cut in the early 1900’s separated it, then it was temporarily an island, and eventually the old river was filled in. So you can live in manhattan but still be on the mainland at the same time.

    35. Fun-Click9884 on

      They stimulated cancer like growth using radition, hopefully the cancer doesnt spread to the mainland.

    39. PaganAfrican on

      Only part of Flevoland that has a traditional dialect (And it’s Saxon! Mostly…)

    40. Massive-Air3891 on

      I was trying to find it on the map by sight and realized this orientation is very strange to me with south facing up and not north facing up.