The Lost City of Rungholt

A German harbor lost to a medieval storm surge

Heute bin ich über Rungholt gefahren, 
Die Stadt ging unter vor sechshundert Jahren;
Noch schlagen die Wellen da wild und empört, 
Wie damals, als sie die Marschen zerstört.

Today over Rungholt town I sailed, 
Where for six centuries the waves have prevailed;  
The whitecaps still lash all around, 
Like back then, when the marshes were drowned.

-- from Trutz, Blanke Hans by Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909). Public domain; trans. Ann Marie Ackermann

Popmelon, “Drowning Dream”, Pixabay, with permission

City of the Drowned

You can’t really call it a grave.

And it isn’t exactly a cemetery, either.

“Necropolis” – Greek for city of the dead – comes closest. But in English, that just means a large elaborate cemetery.

So what do you call a medieval city lost to the sea together with all of its dead? On the northeast coast of Germany, that city has a name. Rungholt.

Rungholt,  the Atlantis of the North Sea

Germany’s Northeast coast before 1362, when Rungholt still existed. Image: Runga, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Unlike Atlantis, Rungholt was real — a rich, medieval trading town of about 2,000 situated on an island. Its harbor attracted merchants from all over medieval Europe. But one night in 1362, a huge storm tide reshaped the North Sea coasts. The dikes didn’t hold. The storm erased islands from the map and sent the entire city to a watery grave. England also lost the coastal town of Ravenser Odd in Yorkshire and most of Dunwich in Suffolk. At least 25,000 people drowned. Of the island where Rungholt once stood, only an islet called Südfall (population: 2) remains today. The storm surge was so devastating people still remember its name – the Grote Mandrenke (in German, Manndränke) – from the Dutch for great man-drowning.

Possible locations of Rungholt on today’s map, based on archaeological finds. Image: The original uploader was Unscheinbar at German Wikipedia, via Wikimedia Commons and GNU Free Documentation License.

Rungholt conjures up the ache I felt when I moved away from a city and knew it was impossible – in my case, due to distance – to go back. It’s more than homesickness. If you’re homesick, you can always visit, but sometimes life takes you too far away. When I moved from Seattle to Germany, the distance of 8,000 km and the expense of flying with my family are prohibitive. So the loss feels more like grief.

I sometimes think of the Rungholt merchants who travelled to the mainland the day before the storm. Or inhabitants of Pompeii who were visiting another town when Vesuvius erupted. How did they feel when they lost not only their family and friends, but also their hometown? That is the grief called Rungholt. And Seattle is my Rungholt.

The islet Südfall on the horizon, viewed from a beach on the island Nordstrand. Rungholt was to Südfall’s left. You can hike over the mudflats at low tide from Nordstrand to Südfall. The two hikers on the tidal flats are returning ahead of the incoming tide. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann

Rungholt in folklore and literature

Local folklore tells us that Rungholt’s church bells continued to peal under water, emitting eerie tones of horror and grief. Those tones have echoed down the centuries: Germans have never forgotten the lost town. The anguish of losing an entire city still affects Germany’s North Sea coast today: Names, songs and poems capture some of the medieval despair. The most famous poem is Trutz, Blanke Hans, quoted at the beginning and end of this post. Blanker Hans is a German mythical monster representing the destructive forces of the North Sea and “trutz” means to resist. So the title means: Defend yourself against the fury of the North Sea!

Rungholt became a North Sea parable. Clerics preached that God punished Rungholt for its greed, just like He did Sodom and Gomorrah. The city of Husum has a school named Rungholt, ships have been christened with the name, hotels bear the name, and Kiel has a city square called Rungholtplatz. And all along the coast, you can find pilings with plaques memorializing just how high the Mandrenke storm surge was.

Pilings along the coast sport grim reminders of the storm surge. This marks the height of the Grote Manndränke at 4.49 m above sea level. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann

Here the piling on Husum’s harbor says “1362 – Gr. Manndränke … appallingly high.”  Image: Ann Marie Ackermann

Rungholt today

You can learn more about Rungholt by visiting the Nordfriesland Museum in Husum. Its exhibition pieces, including bones of the drowned, a reconstructed face of a Rungholt victim based on his skull, pottery indicating Rungholt’s trade with places as far away as Italy, and models of dikes, all dive into the Rungholt saga and explain how a storm surge can destroy a coastal town.

Archaeologists continue to dig the mudflats of the Wadden Sea at low tide, where they recently found the foundations of Rungholt’ s church. The tower no longer stands and the bell of legend has long sunk into the mud, still waiting to be found.

But the people along Germany’s North Sea coast still remember.

Viel tausend Menschen im Nordland ertrinken, 
Viel reiche Länder und Städte versinken….   
Wo gestern Lärm und lustiger Tisch, 
Schwamm andern Tags der stumme Fisch.

Thousands of people on the North Sea drown, 
Myriad rich lands and cities go down…. 
Bygone the mirth and succulent dish, 
Where today there swims the silent fish.

-- from Trutz, Blanke Hans by Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909). Public domain; trans. Ann Marie Ackermann

Is there a city personally lost to you that feels like a Rungholt? And for those of you on England’s North Sea coasts, do you have similar folklore about the Grote Mandrenke and the lost towns of Ravenser Odd or Dunwich?

Recipe: Labskaus

Labskaus at the Compass restaurant on the harbor of Husum. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann

No recipe can better accompany this post than the traditional fare of the German mariner: Labskaus. Don’t confuse it with lobscouse. The English lobscouse is a beef stew and is related to the Scandinavian lapskaus. German Labskaus is more closely related to the English hash.

Labskaus features ingredients that travel well on a ship and deliver vitamin C: salted corned beef, potatoes, onions, and pickled items, such gherkins, beets, and herring. The first three ingredients are chopped, combined, and fried into a corned beef hash, spiced with nutmeg, pepper, coriander or allspice, and accompanied by the pickled vegetables and herring. If you have hens on board your ship, you can add a fried egg.

Labskaus is a popular regional recipe along the North Sea and you can find it in many German and Danish restaurants. If you visit the region, try it out and raise a glass in memory of Rungholt.

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