The Wadden Sea

by the Leader of The Wadden Sea Center, Klaus Melbye

In Martin Andersen Nexø’s book, Løgneren [The Liar], the newly employed island teacher washes the lime off the windows so that the students can look out at the landscape and daydream. He falls into reverie himself: “In the landscape, our identity is created.” This sentence hits the nail on the head as a description for the effect that the Wadden Sea has upon people.

The Wadden Sea – an elongated landscape where, when the tide is low, you can let your eye move almost infinitely, stopping only when it takes in a string of island pearls appearing off in the distance in the north, namely Langli, Fanø, Keldsand and Mandø and, appearing off in the distance in the south, Rømø. Skallingen and the Ho Bay fashion the northernmost limit of the Wadden Sea. Along the Wadden Sea’s coastline, we find the cities of Varde, Esbjerg, Ribe, Skaerbaek and Tønder, all of which are situated on the edge of marshes.

This landscape does not stop at the Danish border but continues on as far as the port city of Den Helder, situated at the northwestern tip of Holland. Between the islands and the mainland we find the Wadden Sea and the marshlands linking the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark together – both when it comes to nature and to culture.

Birds in flocks
We are connected across the various national borders primarily because we share a joint responsibility to take care of the Wadden Sea, which happens to be one of the world’s most important “airports” for more than 12 million birds on their migratory routes over the eastern part of the Atlantic Ocean.

There are twice as many migratory birds in the Wadden Sea as there are people living in Denmark. They arrive in the spring and come again in the autumn and they use the Wadden Sea as a larder and as a place to molt and to rest on their way from their winter habitats and en route to their breeding grounds.

The flocks of migratory birds present a magnificent spectacle: vast flocks of sandpipers glitter like arrays of silver coins as they turn upward to the sun; enormous flocks of geese, which virtually fashion a canopy over the sky as the birds fly on to their next foraging site, talking and honking the whole time; reeve flocks, hunting for the next battleground; or the dramatic change of scenery in the air when the peregrine falcon zooms in to attack the throng of thousands of migratory birds that have gathered together at the high tide’s rest areas.

By sheer virtue of their immense numbers, the migratory birds mark out the Wadden Sea’s global importance. With their winter quarters in southern Europe and Africa and their breeding areas in the northernmost parts of Canada and Siberia, they bind the world together. But without the Wadden Sea there might not be any migratory birds.

Bird life in a world class category
The area’s great importance for breeding birds can be fully experienced when standing at the Tønder Marsh and on the islands of Mandø and Langli, where there is a density of aviary life that few people are accustomed to seeing: godwits, lapwings and redshanks; avocets that are driving their nestlings and chicks away from the seagulls on Mandø; or the rare birds of prey like the short-eared owl, Montagu’s harrier and only more recently, the white-tailed eagles that breed in the marshes.

We are linked across international borders because we share a joint responsibility to face up to the task of taking care of the Wadden Sea

A landscape in constant movement
The Wadden Sea is one of the world’s largest wetlands. Here, the tide’s pulse is constantly changing the landscape from one moment, with the sea spread out all over the place, to the next, where we can view a landscape of tidal flats for as far as the eye can see.

The low-lying marsh areas have been created by the sea through a process of the sea level’s rising and the ongoing deposits of sedimentary material. Every day, the materials of sand, silt and clay are carried out with the tides. When the winters’ storms set in, the process of sanding up and the formation of the dunes are accelerated in certain places while in other places, the landscapes are eroded.

Four large deeps that separate the islands effect the movement of the tides’ ebb and flow, back and forth, twice every 25 hours. The water is allocated into the Wadden Sea’s deep trenches, tidal creeks, inter-mudflat drainage ditches and smaller trenches. The coastal region’s inter-mudflat drainage ditches become filled with sand and clay and the marshes grow together.

In the Wadden Sea area, we find Denmark’s largest tidal difference, ranging from 1.4 meters to 1.9 meters as we reach the line extending from Denmark’s southern border. The tide is influenced by the moon and the sun and the difference in tides is due to the coast’s funnel-shaped contour. When we consider the etymology of the word, “marsh,” we reflect that the word actually means “created by the sea.”

Dramatic storms
The Wadden Sea’s coast lies low in relation to the global sea level and is therefore vulnerable to the North Sea’s storms. This is why people have built dikes running along the coastline all the way from Ho Bay and Esbjerg in the north to Den Helder (in northern Holland) in the south. The dikes are almost continuous along this 500-kilometer long stretch.

The storms in 1976, 1981 and 1999 each tested the dikes’ strengths to withstand the vicissitudes of nature. This was especially the case with the storm in 1999, which brought about a water level of more than 5 meters at Ribe – and on top of this, we have to add in the height of a wave measuring 1.70 meters, with the result that the water had risen to a level that was just 30 centimeters from the top of the dike, at low tide!

Climatic prognoses suggest there will be more storms in the future. The dikes are under pressure. For this reason, the cities and towns situated along the Wadden Sea are facing great challenges.

People and nature in tandem
Living near the Wadden Sea has always been closely connected with nature. And the Wadden Sea’s landscape has been created in close interaction with the people who have lived there and with the people who are still living there today. In the course of generations, the peasants here have adapted their hopes and dreams around – and sometimes in defiance of – nature’s powerful forces and have managed to make optimal use of the marsh’s fertile soil. On this account, the natural marsh formation has been intensified, precipitated and accelerated over the past 500 years – sea dikes and river levees have been established in ingenious systems of channels that are supposed to prevent flooding. 



In the course of time, people living here have also established the silt trenches, popularly known as “candy yards.” These are fenced-in areas within the marshes that capture the beneficial, fertile material, the silt (“the candy”) that washes onto the land with the high tide so that it eventually manages to settle. On the underlying arable land, the residents could cultivate grain.

In olden days, you could tell it was a good winter on Mandø when you had ensnared 100 geese with the fowler’s net for storing in the brine tub, because then you were sure you wouldn’t have to make do with eating only fish. For hundreds of years, people collected seashells, which were called “scales”, for the lime burning kilns used for producing lime. Limestone was used to make mortar and together with large medieval bricks and more modern bricks, the cities of Tønder, Skaerbaek, Ribe and Varde were built with limestone created from Muschelkalk (shell limestone) taken from the Wadden Sea. Up until the 1970s, the village churches were still being whitewashed with Muschelkalk.

National Park and World Heritage Site
In 2008, a decision was reached that “Wadden Sea National Park” would be established. This is slated to come into full realization in 2010/11. The national park will serve to underscore the Wadden Sea’s status and the area’s global importance. The designation of the region as a “national park” is meant to signal that here, both the nature and the culture are something special. In the Wadden Sea area, nature and culture go hand in hand – and this generates a significant part of our identity.

The Wadden Sea is unique on a global level. Singling out this area as a World Heritage site will be the crowning jewel on the work and it will serve also to raise our consciousness about the area’s universal merit –when it comes to both nature and culture.

Dutch influence
Fanø already had a strong connection with Holland before 1741. The influence of the Netherlands can be seen, for example, on the Fanø-dwellers’ regional costumes, which evince a similarity to certain Dutch costumes. Also, the Dutch tiles that covered many of the walls in the nineteenth century can still be found on the walls in many kitchens on Fanø. The tiles were especially good as ballast when ships were on their way home without any cargo and the tiles probably also served as status symbols.

Protective measures taken at the Wadden Sea
The greater part of the Wadden Sea area is already protected and has been designated a wildlife sanctuary, a bird-protection area, a natural habitat area and a Ramsar area.

In June 2009, The Wadden Sea areas in both Germany and the Netherlands were endowed with the status of being included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.