Noordoostpolder (Dutch: [ˈnoːrt.oːstˌpɔldər] ; English: "North-East Polder") is a polder and municipality in the Flevoland province in the central Netherlands. Formerly, it was also called Urker Land. Emmeloord is the administrative center, located in the heart of the Noordoostpolder.
For history, see Zuiderzee Works.
A terp, also known as a wierde, woerd, warf, warft, werf, werve, wurt or værft, is an artificial dwelling mound found on the North European Plain that has been created to provide safe ground during storm surges, high tides and sea or river flooding. The various terms used reflect the regional dialects of the North European region.
Terps are found in the coastal regions of the Netherlands, particularly in the provinces of Zeeland, Friesland and Groningen, as well as in southern Denmark and northwestern Germany. Before the construction of dykes, these mounds provided protection against floodwaters that regularly disrupted daily life. They are especially common in East Frisia (Ostfriesland) and Nordfriesland in Germany. On the Halligen islands in Kries Norfriesland, people continue to live on terps without the protection of dykes. Terps are also present in the Rhine and Meuse river plains in central Netherlands. Further examples occur in North Holland, such as Avendorp near Schagen, and in the towns of Bredene and Leffinge near Oostende in Belgium. Additional terps are located at mouth of the IJssel River, including at Kampereiland in the province of Overijssel, as well as on the former island of Schokland in the Zuiderzee, now part of the reclaimed Noordoostpolder. An old terp, known as Het Torp is also located beneath the town of Den Helder in North Holland.
A polder (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpɔldər] ) is a low-lying tract of land that forms an artificial hydrological entity, enclosed by embankments known as dikes. The three types of polder are:
The ground level in drained marshes subsides over time. All polders will eventually be below the surrounding water level some or all of the time. Water enters the low-lying polder through infiltration and water pressure of groundwater, or rainfall, or transport of water by rivers and canals. This usually means that the polder has an excess of water, which is pumped out or drained by opening sluices at low tide. Care must be taken not to set the internal water level too low. Polder land made up of peat (former marshland) will sink in relation to its previous level, because of peat decomposing when exposed to oxygen from the air.
The Flevopolder is an island polder forming the bulk of Flevoland, a province of the Netherlands. Created by land reclamation, its northeastern part was drained in 1955 and the remainder—the southwest—in 1968.
Unlike other major polders, it is surrounded by lakes and below-sea-level channels. By some definitions, it is the world's largest artificial island. Levees, dikes, and pumping were used to drain the land. The polder's name references the ancient Lake Flevo. The Flevopolder, along with the Noordoostpolder, forms the Flevoland province, which is located near Amsterdam in the southwest and Kampen, Overijssel in the northeast.
Flevoland (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈfleːvoːlɑnt] ) is the twelfth and newest province of the Netherlands, established in 1986, when the southern and eastern Flevopolders, together with the Noordoostpolder, were merged into one provincial entity. It is in the centre of the country in the former Zuiderzee, which was turned into the freshwater IJsselmeer by the closure of the Afsluitdijk in 1932. Almost all of the land belonging to Flevoland was reclaimed in the 1950s and 1960s while splitting the Markermeer and bordering lakes from the IJsselmeer. As to dry land, it is the smallest province of the Netherlands at 1,410 km (540 sq mi), but not gross land as that includes much of the waters of the fresh water lakes (meres) mentioned.
The province had a population of about 445,000 as of January 2023 and consists of six municipalities. Its capital is Lelystad and its most populous city is Almere, which forms part of the Randstad and has grown to become the seventh largest city of the country. Flevoland is bordered in the extreme north by Friesland, in the northeast by Overijssel, and in the northwest by the lakes Markermeer and IJsselmeer. In the southeast, the province borders on Gelderland; in the southwest on Utrecht and North Holland. Outside urban areas, the land in Flevoland is predominantly used for agriculture.
The Ertebølle culture (c. 5,400 BCE – 3,950 BCE) (Danish pronunciation: [ˈɛɐ̯təˌpølə]) is a hunter-gatherer and fisher, pottery-making culture dating to the end of the Mesolithic period. The culture was concentrated in Southern Scandinavia. It is named after the type site, a location in the small village of Ertebølle on Limfjorden in Danish Jutland. In the 1890s the National Museum of Denmark excavated heaps of oyster shells there, mixed with mussels, snails, bones, and artefacts of bone, antler, and flint, which were evaluated as kitchen middens (Danish køkkenmødding), or refuse dumps. Accordingly, the culture is less-commonly named the Kitchen Midden. As it is approximately identical to the Ellerbek culture of Schleswig-Holstein, the combined name, Ertebølle-Ellerbek is often used. The Ellerbek culture (German Ellerbek-Kultur) is named after a type site in Ellerbek, a community on the edge of Kiel, Germany.
In the 1960s and 1970s another closely related culture was found in the (now dry) Noordoostpolder in the Netherlands, near the village Swifterbant and the former island of Urk. Named the Swifterbant culture (5,300 – 3,400 BCE) they show a transition from hunter-gatherer to both animal husbandry, primarily cows and pigs, and cultivation of barley and emmer wheat. During the formative stages contact with nearby Linear Pottery culture settlements in Limburg has been detected. Like the Ertebølle culture, they lived near open water, in this case creeks, riverdunes, and bogs along post-glacial banks of the Overijsselse Vechte. Recent excavations including the "Trijntje" skeleton show a local continuity going back to (at least) 5,600 BCE, when burial practices resembled the contemporary gravefields in Denmark and South Sweden "in all details", suggesting only part of a diverse ancestral "Ertebølle"-like heritage was locally continued into the later (Middle Neolithic) Swifterbant tradition (4,200 – 3,400 BCE).
In the Netherlands, the bordering lakes (in Dutch: Randmeren) are a chain of lakes which separate the Flevopolder and Noordoostpolder from the ancient lands of the provinces of Gelderland, Utrecht, Overijssel and Friesland.
Strictly speaking, these 'lakes' are not separated from each other, but are a continuous body of water between the old land and the new polder lands, consisting of lakes divided by straits, dams, locks, or in some cases just a bridge over narrow water.
Schokland (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈsxɔklɑnt]) is a former island in the Dutch Zuiderzee, in the municipality of Noordoostpolder. Schokland was an elongated strip of peat land which ceased to be an island when the Noordoostpolder was reclaimed from the sea in 1942. It is now just a slightly elevated part of the polder, with a still partly intact retaining wall of the waterfront of Middelbuurt. On 1 April 2014, it had 8 inhabitants, but according to Statistics Netherlands there are five people living on the former island.