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The name Zuiderzee (Southern Sea, from the Frisian perspective) dates from after this event, as the water had before been a freshwater lake that was only directly connected to the North Sea by the former river Vlie. The St. Lucia's flood removed the last of a series of natural sandy dunes and boulder clay barriers, after which the new, now salty Zuiderzee came into existence and grew rapidly, since the peatlands behind the former barriers were now mostly unprotected against erosion from the sea.
The coming into existence of the Zuiderzee was the undoing of the powerful medieval trading city of Stavoren on the right bank of the now disappearing river Vlie, and the making of first the IJssel Hanse-cities of Kampen, Zwolle, Deventer, Zutphen, and Doesburg, and later the anti-Hanseatic city of Amsterdam, which began its rise from nothing almost immediately after the St. Lucia's flood.
Much land was permanently flooded in what is now the Waddenzee and IJsselmeer. It especially affected the north and northwestern part of the Netherlands, particularly the current provinces of North Holland and Friesland.
The island of Griend in the current Waddenzee saw serious destruction, with only ten houses left standing. After the flood, Harlingen, about 25 kilometres southeast of Griend and formerly landlocked, came into existence as the new seaport of Friesland, a role it kept for seven centuries.
The only part of the current northwestern Netherlands, apart from the western Dunes area (the old Dutch heartland) and the Frisian Islands that escaped annihilation was West-Friesland, since this area was already protected by a ringdike that mostly held and where not, could be repaired after the floods receded.
Shortly after the St. Lucia Day disaster, the West-Frisia, now separated from the rest of Friesland by a strait of around 15 kilometres at its narrowest, was annexed by the county of Holland, expanding this county northwards. The flood also brought the Friso-Hollandic Wars, which had lasted around 200 years, to an end. Shortly after this annexation, the West-Frisian cities of Hoorn and Enkhuizen began a rise to prominence that would last until the 17th century.
More information: Ancient Origins
The Zuiderzee or Zuider Zee was a shallow bay of the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands, extending about 100 km inland and at most 50 km wide, with an overall depth of about 4 to 5 metres and a coastline of about 300 km. It covered 5,000 km2. Its name is Dutch for southern sea, indicating that the name originates in Friesland, to the north of the Zuiderzee.
In the 20th century the majority of the Zuiderzee was closed off from the North Sea by the construction of the Afsluitdijk, leaving the mouth of the inlet to become part of the Wadden Sea. The salt water inlet changed into a fresh water lake now called the IJsselmeer (IJssel Lake) after the river that drains into it, and by means of drainage and polders, an area of some 1,500 km2 was reclaimed as land. This land eventually became the province of Flevoland, with a population of nearly 400,000 (2011).
In classical times there was already a body of water in this location, called Lacus Flevo (Lake Flevo) by Roman authors. It was much smaller than its later forms and its connection to the main sea was much narrower; it may have been a complex of lakes and marshes and channels, rather than one lake.
Over time these lakes gradually eroded their soft peat shores and spread, a process known as waterwolf. Some part of this area of water was later called the Vlie; it probably flowed into the sea through what is now the Vliestroom channel between the islands of Vlieland and Terschelling.
The Marsdiep was once a river (fluvium Maresdeop) which may have been a distributary of the Vlie. During the early Middle Ages this began to change as rising sea levels and storms started to eat away at the coastal areas which consisted mainly of peatlands. In this period the inlet was referred to as the Almere, indicating it was still more of a lake, but the mouth and size of the inlet were much widened in the 12th century and especially after a disastrous flood in 1282 broke through the barrier dunes near Texel. The disaster marked the rise of Amsterdam on the southwestern end of the bay, since the seagoing traffic of the Baltic trade could now visit.
The even more massive St. Lucia's flood occurred 14 December 1287, when the seawalls broke during a storm, killing approximately 50,000 to 80,000 people in the fifth largest flood in recorded history. The name Zuiderzee came into general usage around this period.
The size of this inland sea remained largely stable from the 15th century onwards due to improvements in dikes, but when storms pushed North Sea water into the inlet, the Zuiderzee became a volatile cauldron of water, frequently resulting in flooding and the loss of ships. For example, on 18 November 1421, a seawall at the Zuiderzee dike broke, which flooded 7 villages and killed about 10,000 people. This was the Second St. Elizabeth's flood.
The Netherlands was part of the First French Empire between 1810 and 1813. A département was formed in 1811 and named as Zuyderzée after the Zuiderzee, whose territory roughly corresponded to the present provinces of North Holland and Utrecht.
In 1928, the 6-meter and 8-meter sailing events for the Amsterdam Summer Olympics were held on the Zuiderzee.
More information: The Guardian
and years of flood and famine come,
and the climate is not changed with dance,
libation or prayer.
John Wesley Powell
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