On the way back, we stopped at Schokland, a long, narrow former island that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The museum tells the story of the place quite simply: an island regularly threatened by water, people living in difficult conditions, and then the evacuation of the population in the 19th century.
But what touched me most was imagining everyday life here. You can really picture the people who lived on the island when you see their clothes, jewellery and other everyday objects.
Families living on this tiny piece of land, surrounded by water, exposed to wind, storms and floods. Houses disappearing after major floods.
Life must have been hard, isolated and, let’s say… not exactly easy.
And then there is the next part of the story, which feels almost surreal when you think about it: instead of giving the island back to the sea forever, the Dutch eventually made… the sea around it disappear.
Today, Schokland sits in the middle of the land in Flevoland. So you can walk around a former island without seeing any sea at all.
We found the whole story fascinating and really touching.
