HKB
of the inhabitants of Eiderstede and Ditmarsch perished; and on the 11th of October, 1634, the islands and the whole coast, as far as Jutland, suffered by a dreadful deluge.
Destruction of Northstrand by the sea.--Northstrand, up to the year 1240, was, with the islands Sylt and Fohr, so nearly connected with the mainland as to appear a peninsula, and was called North Friesland, a highly cultivated and populous district. It measured from nine to eleven geographical miles from north to south, and six to eight from east to west. In the above-mentioned year it was torn asunder from the continent, and in part overwhelmed. The Isle of Northstrand, thus formed, was, towards the end of the sixteenth century, only four geographical miles in circumference, and was still celebrated for its cultivation and numerous population. After many losses, it still contained nine thousand inhabitants. At last, in the year 1634, on the evening of the 11th of October, a flood passed over the whole island, whereby 1300 houses, with many churches, were lost; fifty thousand head of cattle perished, and above six thousand men. Three small islets, one of them still called Northstrand, alone remained, which are now continually wasting.
The redundancy of river water in the Baltic, especially during the melting of ice and snow in spring, causes in general an outward current through the channel called the Cattegat. But after a continuance of northwesterly gales, especially during the height of the spring-tides, the Atlantic rises, and pouring a flood of water into the Baltic, commits dreadful devastations on the isles of the Danish Archipelago. This current even acts, though with diminished force, as far eastward as the vicinity of Dantzic.[447] Accounts written during the last ten centuries attest the wearing down of promontories on the Danish coast, the deepening of gulfs, the severing of peninsulas from the mainland, and the waste of islands, while in several cases marsh land, defended for centuries by dikes, has at last been overflowed, and thousands of the inhabitants whelmed in the waves. Thus the island Barsoe, on the coast of Sleswick, has lost, year after year, an acre at a time, and the island Alsen suffers in like manner.
Cimbrian deluge.--As we have already seen that during the flood before mentioned, 6000 men and 50,000 head of cattle perished on Northstrand on the western coast of Jutland, we are all well prepared to find that this peninsula, the Cimbrica Chersonesus of the ancients, has from a remote period been the theatre of like catastrophes. Accordingly, Strabo records a story, although he treats it as an incredible fiction, that, during a high tide, the ocean rose upon this coast so rapidly, that men on horseback were scarcely able to escape.[448] Florus, alluding to the same tradition, says, "Cimbri, Teutoni, atque Tigurini, ab extremis Galliae profugi, cum terras eorum inundasset Oceanus, novas sedes toto orbe quaerebant."[449] This event, commonly called the "Cimbrian Deluge," is supposed to have happened about three centuries before the Christian era; but it is not improbable that the principal catastrophe was preceded and followed by many devastations like those experienced in modern times on the islands and shores of Jutland, and such calamities may well be conceived to have forced on the migration of some maritime tribes.