Waiting For The Flood

After the storms that have swept through the start of 2024, New Generation Thinker Dr Seán Williams heads to Dunwich, East Anglia. Here a medieval harbour fell to a storm that also took Rungholt in the Wadden Sea, which was said to have re-appeared last year. Seán walks along ditches, looks out to sea, and turns to the pages of history and literature about the Wadden Sea – archipelagos along the opposite coast of Northern Europe, stretching from the Netherlands to Germany and Denmark.

Seán reflects on how people living in small communities along the threatened coastline wait for a flood: whether stoic, scared, or serene; whether determined to be the last man standing or to surrender to the storm tides with awe. When a tide is imminent, they pass the time playing board games and telling stories.

Surging waters and shifting sands are nothing new along coastlines such as these, but the question on everyone's mind is - will the dykes hold? The answer amid rising sea levels from climate change, is that some will certainly not.

Seán draws on a famous nineteenth-century novella called 'Schimmelreiter' about a German dyke-master by Theodor Storm, talks to ecocritic and reader of literature about the Wadden Sea Dr Katie Ritson, from the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at the University of Munich; and to Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen – directors of a new Danish film that premiered in Amsterdam in late 2023 called ' As the Tide Comes In.

Producer: Mohini Patel

As we brace ourselves for storm tides, storm surges are a way of life in the Wadden Sea.

As we brace ourselves for storm tides, for communities living in the low-lying areas of the Wadden Sea storm surges have long been a way of life. Will the dykes hold back the sea?