Flooded and lost
A poor men's Atlantis in the Dutch Delta

1602-1639

A chronicle about ordinary and persevering people

Written by: Paul de Schipper

Orisant is about the origin of the Nether-lands. Since times lost in history these low lands were populated by people who had to defend themselves against the sea. Orisant tells about the eternal struggle against the floods. It reveals the stories and the troubled times of the people entering the delta in the south western part of the Netherlands, long time ago. And how they tried to build themselves a living, generation after generation.
This was going to be the art of a nation. In others words how people made a liveable land from a sand and mud dump left over from the Ice Age.

The Delta

The Delta of the Netherlands is situated in the southwest of the country.
This is the area where, already in ancient times, mighty rivers like Rhine Meuse and Scheldt collide with the powers of the North Sea. A landscape, created on the Seventh Day, when God had his day off.

Born in swamps

The story of Orisant really starts about 10.000 years ago when the first people came down from higher plains in the east and entered the salty moors at that time still untouched by the sea.
In that muddy, unhealthy, humid and mosquito-pestered land they built themselves huts and compounds, catching fish in coves and hunting small animals. Far away in the west where a grey sky, hardly without contrast touched the moors, there was a yellow wall of protection: dunes. One day the sea broke through. The people were simply washed away. Any human presence disappeared.
The North Sea had it's finest hour, using the delta as a playground, thus creating an archipelago of hundreds of islands, tides going in and out, polishing sandbanks, demolishing it again. Sometimes some grass and reeds started to grow, holding the sediments at its places. So islands started to grow. They were born in salty moors and between tidal creeks.

Sea Land

Meanwhile on the European continent, in the year AD 400, the Huns came down from Asia. Eight years lasted Attila's rush. Then one night, gasping for breath, the big Hun died while making love. He changed the world and made a wandering mix of the European tribes.
From this chaos the Franks wrestled themsel-ves loose, expanding their powers to the low lands by the sea. They described the tribes at their northern border as "the people that live in the flooded area."
One day in the seventh century another meaningful event happened. The Anglo-Saxon missionary Willibrord waded ashore in the delta. On the island of Walcheren he wasn't received very friendly on this ghostly coast.. One of those animistic unbelievers, a priest too, hit him with a stick on the head. It did not prevent the holy man from cutting down the pagans holy trees and converting these savage people, living between sea and land.
Sea-Land it was called. 'Zeeland' in Dutch.

The first dykes

In the Middle Ages some of the islands were being populated again. By shepherds at first, they build themselves refuge mounds to hide away from the sea when the floods were swept over the swamps by storms. So they tried to survive, living like the drowning persons noticed by the Roman writer Plinius Secundus when he visited the area in the year 47.
One day those people tried out another way to protect themselves. They started to build dykes. Primitive walls at first, made of clay. It was there first offensive against the sea. With the assistance of Flemish monks they learned to conquer the sea-land. The area behind the dykes they named 'polders'. There they founded villages and cities. Then another struggle started: the defensive against the sea attacking these dykes. Spade work it was.
Around 1200 AD there happened to be an increasing intensity of storm surges as well as a rise of sea level. The oldest dykes were undoubtedly very weak constructions.
In that period in the Dutch Delta the land losses were amply compensated by land gains elsewhere.

The Low Lands' Pompeij

In this area there was a proud city protected by powerful walls. Resistant against human enemies, but not against the sea. In 1530 the sea rose to an unknown level. In the city of Reymerswaal it was said that that the mackerel was swimming around the main altar in the church. The city was devastated and flattened, disappeared completely. Hundreds of square kilometres of land and some islands were completely over flooded. How many drowned, we do not know. The remains are still there in the Eastern Scheldt. The book of Orisant also tells the story of this lost city. It's like reading about the Pompeij disaster.
About sixty years later in 1598 some investors, rich Dutch merchants the Silent, started to reclaim the 'floating land'. Among them Maria van Nassau, a daughter of the founder of the ruling dynasty in the Netherlands William the Silent (William of Orange). They had money, planned the project and send down an army of horses and labourers into the archipelago. That's how Orisant started. A sandbank only, about six miles long and three miles wide. The dyke around the island was finished in august 1602. That's when the epic and the drama started. About one hundred people, men, women and children entered the islands as colonists. Refugees from the Eighty Years war between the Dutch and the orthodox catholic king Philip II of Spain. They came to shape themselves a future by farming. There names are known. Simple people, threatened by the Plague, threatened by poor harvest, by hunger, but at most threatened by the North Sea. From the files they come to you, they are mentioned by there names. In the book they become familiar. Characters you learn to love. Like the shepherds in the famous Cathar story of Mantailloui in France, written by Eduard Le Roy-Ladurie.

The island of Orisant

Poor people of Orisant. Their struggle was lost before it started, we know now. They did not. It lasted 37 years. Then the island was given back to the sea. It is 60 feet below surface now. The heroic story of these people is the story of how the Dutch created their country. That, they did was success.
Orisant was one of their failures.

The settlement on the tiny island, in the tidal inlet which is called Eastern Scheldt, is one them. The only one of which we know the story now. It is written in the book Orisant.

If you are interested and you want more information, mail to: info@orisant.com