A Brill Calendar: November 19

The Saint Elizabeth Floods

Few disasters caused by both climate and geography wreaked destruction on such a scale in the European Delta as when a severe storm, coinciding with a high tide, unleashed itself on Holland and Brabant in the early hours of November 19, 1421.

A vast expanse of land, de ‘Grote Waard’, largely man-made, measuring some 800 square kilometres, that had functioned well for pasture, agriculture and dwelling over centuries - indeed the first and greatest of the ‘polder’ kind - was taken back by the raging elements to the North Sea. This tragedy was certainly aggravated - if not enabled - by the fact that the dykes guarding the land from the ‘sea-wolf’ were in bad repair because of warring factions and controversies between the populace of the region. De ‘Grote Waard’, nowadays a superb national park of the ‘wetlands’ type, de ‘Biesbos’, was never reclaimed from the sea.

During these stormy mid November days, Christian medieval Europe celebrated Saint Elizabeth, patroness of the poor and needy; hence the name of the 1421 disaster: the Saint Elizabeth Flood. Actually, it was the third flood in a sequence, preceded by namesakes dating back to 1404 and 1377, near enough on the same calendar day.

When foreigners assess the fundamental notions and values of the Netherlands, the fact that the local populace had to create the very soil on which they survive and prosper is often mentioned. Just like other facile marketing slogans, this one hardly rings true. There are other great deltas where cultures developed successfully. And even much earlier; see Mesopotamia and Egypt for example.

However, it is seldom admitted by book-keepers, accountants and their like that myths, as soon as they emerge in history, embody a cultural power second to none; that of changing the face of the earth.