268 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



over the land. Some of the Nordstrand people managed to 

 reach Fohr, where their descendants to this day form a con- 

 siderable portion of the population. But the memory of 

 their advent is still preserved by the peculiar dialect of 

 Friesian which they speak, and by the name of " Wiecklinge " 

 — or " people who have fled " — applied to them by the other 

 inhabitants of the island. Just now, half of the village of 

 Wyk and the whole of Nieblum are peopled by these 

 "Wiecklinge." After the flood had subsided, some of the 

 people returned and commenced the world anew. But others 

 of the new-old islets remained uninhabited until settlers from 

 Holland lighted on them, and immediately, with their usual 

 industry, set to work to dyke them, and generally to extract 

 food out of the sand and mud. Nordstrand and Pellworm 

 especially were affected by these Hollanders. Hence these 

 two islands form an exception to the others, in so far that in 

 them Platt-deutsch, and not Friesian, is the language of the 

 inhabitants. 



About the same time, it may be added, the Lyme-fjord in 

 Jutland was opened, so that vessels could sail from the 

 German Ocean into the Kattegat. Husum, which was the 

 mainland market-town for the Friesians before this great 

 catastrophe, was at that time a prosperous city, and even 

 excited the jealousy of Hamburg. It is now a dull enough 

 place, with none to do it reverence. 



The undyked Hallige are exposed to the whole force of the 

 sea, and are year by year decreasing ; and so are necessarily 

 the inhabitants. In 1847 they numbered, on the fifteen 

 islets, 672 souls; in 1867 they were only 531. 



These Hallige and all the other Friesian Islands were once 

 much nearer each other than now. Indeed, the larger ones 

 were at one time a continental mass. Some time in the 

 thirteenth century — the chroniclers relate, though I will not 

 vouch for it — the people from some of the Hallige used to go 

 on foot to church at Fohr when the tide was out. Between 

 Fohr and Nordmarsh-Langeness, the whole strait was laid 

 bare at low water except one place, and across this the people 

 used to pass on a bridge made of a horse's bones which had 

 got jammed into the puddle. In these old Friesian chronicles 



