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35-679: The Markermeer was not originally intended to remain a lake. It was formerly part of the Zuiderzee , a saltwater inlet of the North Sea , that was dammed off by the Afsluitdijk (Closure Dike) in 1932, turning the Zuiderzee into the freshwater IJsselmeer. The following years saw the reclamation of extensive tracts of land as large polders in an enormous project known as the Zuiderzee Works . One of these,

70-546: A memorable storm in Friesland and Holland , and came from the North Sea, breaking and destroying several dams and dunes and transforming it into a bay which was then called the Zuiderzee, meaning Southern Sea . The name "Zuiderzee" came into general usage around this period. The size of this inland sea remained largely stable from the 15th century onwards due to improvements in dikes , but when storms pushed North Sea water into

105-721: A town in Overijssel , and later also towns in Holland such as Amsterdam, Hoorn , and Enkhuizen . These towns traded at first with ports on the Baltic Sea , in England, and in the Hanseatic League , but later also with the rest of the world when the Netherlands established its colonial empire . When that lucrative trade diminished, most of the towns fell back on fishing and some industry until

140-480: Is evidenced by several references to events of Augustus 's reign; especially to certain new names given to Spanish towns. Mela, like the two Senecas , Lucan , Martial , Quintilian , Trajan , Hadrian , were all part of Italic communities settled in various parts of Spain that eventually relocated in Rome. It has been conjectured that Pomponius Mela may have been related in some way to Marcus Annaeus Mela , son of Seneca

175-554: Is mentioned among others in a life of saints written by Anglo-Saxon Bishop Saint Boniface in 753, and a deed of gift from the town of Urk . Its etymology may be eels , in Dutch aal or ael , so: ael mere = "eel lake" Presumably, the water of Lake Almere at that time was fresh water or slightly brackish . The name of the new town of Almere in Flevoland was given in 1984 in memory of this body of water. A number of occurrences during

210-557: The Bay of Biscay more accurately than Eratosthenes or Strabo, his ideas of the British Isles and their position are also clearer than his predecessors. He is the first to name the Orcades or Orkney Islands , which he defines and locates pretty correctly. Of northern Europe his knowledge was imperfect, but he speaks of a great bay (" Codanus sinus ") to the north of Germany, among whose many islands

245-704: The Marker Wadden aims to create some islands in the north of the lake, with a view to establish breeding grounds for seabirds. The islands will be a wetland , comparable with the Wadden Sea , but without appreciable tides because the Markermeer is not connected with the sea . This new nature reserve will be made accessible to tourists. Zuiderzee The Zuiderzee or Zuider Zee ( Dutch: [ˌzœydərˈzeː] ; old spelling Zuyderzee or Zuyder Zee ), historically called Lake Almere and Lake Flevo ,

280-620: The Markerwaard , was to occupy the area of the current Markermeer. Part of the construction of this polder was building the Houtribdijk , also called Markerwaarddijk , finished in 1976, which hydrologically splits the IJsselmeer in two, the southern section being the Markermeer. Because of changing priorities and doubts about its financial feasibility, the Markerwaard was indefinitely postponed in

315-800: The Straits of Gibraltar , and describes the countries adjoining the south coast of the Mediterranean ; then he moves round by Syria and Asia Minor to the Black Sea , and so returns to Spain along the north shore of the Euxine, Propontis , etc. After treating the Mediterranean islands, he next takes the ocean littoral —to west, north, east and south successively—from Spain and Gaul round to India, from India to Persia , Arabia and Ethiopia ; and so again works back to Spain. Like most classical geographers he conceives of

350-421: The 1980s and the Markermeer has since begun to become an ecological and recreational asset on its own. The Markermeer is used as a freshwater reservoir and a buffer against floodwaters and droughts. In 2003 the Netherlands was hit by drought, and several minor dikes were endangered. Water from the Markermeer was used to keep the area surrounding Amsterdam wet, thereby keeping the dikes safe. A recent project,

385-434: The 20th century when tourism became the major source of income. Contained within the Zuiderzee were five small islands, the remains of what were once larger islands, peninsulas connected to the mainland , or in the case of Pampus , an artificial island. These were Wieringen , Urk , Schokland , Pampus and Marken . The inhabitants of these islands also subsisted mainly on fishing and related industries and still do in

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420-568: The East (Oostelijk) Flevoland Polder, built in 1957; and the South (Zuidelijk) Flevoland Polder, completed in 1968. A fifth, Markewaard, began construction in 1963, and became partially complete, but was abandoned in the mid-1980s. Collectively, this system of dams, dikes, and polders is called the Zuiderzee Works . Around the Zuiderzee many fishing villages grew up and several developed into walled towns with extensive trade connections, in particular Kampen ,

455-581: The Elder and father of Lucan . The general views of the De situ orbis mainly agree with those current among Greek writers from Eratosthenes to Strabo ; the latter was probably unknown to Mela. But Pomponius is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the Earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones , inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to

490-559: The Middle Ages led to the transformation of the lake to an inland sea that would be called the Zuiderzee, which are: Especially during the 12th century, particularly in 1219 and 1282, high tides and storms eroded the western banks of the Vlie and submerged large areas of land. The land between Stavoren, Texel, and Medemblik was washed away around 1170. The waterway between Stavoren and Enkhuizen, however, did not appear until around 1400. The erosion

525-594: The Zuiderzee became the IJsselmeer , and the outer portion of the Zuiderzee became the Wadden Sea . Large areas of land, mainly for agricultural use, were subsequently reclaimed from the water through the construction of polders with dams, pumping, and other hydrological technology. Four had been built by the early 1980s. They were the Wieringermeer Polder built in 1930; the Northeast (Noordoost) Polder, built in 1942;

560-555: The Zuiderzee. The construction between 1927 and 1932 of a 19-mile long dam (the Afsluitdijk ), under plans originating from Cornelius Lely , enclosed the Zuiderzee. The creation of this dam was hastened by the Flood of January 1916 . Plans for closing the Zuiderzee had been made over thirty years earlier but had not yet passed in parliament . With the completion of the Afsluitdijk in 1932,

595-726: The Zuiderzee. It was separated from the sea by a belt of marsh and fen ; at the time, the original coastline ran along the line of the Frisian Islands . A number of streams, including the Vecht , Eem , and Ysel , fed into the lake. The lake itself fed out into the North Sea through the Vlie (Latin Flevus ). It existed in Roman times and the early Middle Ages . From the Indo-European root *plew- "flow",

630-560: The case of Urk and Wieringen. All of these islands, except for Pampus, are now part of the mainland or connected to it. 52°42′N 05°24′E  /  52.700°N 5.400°E  / 52.700; 5.400 Pomponius Mela Pomponius Mela , who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer . He was born at the end of the 1st century BC in Tingentera (now Algeciras ) and died c.  AD 45. His short work ( De situ orbis libri III. ) remained in use nearly to

665-403: The connection to the sea and the lake were significantly enlarged. A period of lower sea levels followed. The Marsdiep was once a river ( fluvium Maresdeop ) which may have been a distributary of the Vlie . During the early Middle Ages this began to change as rising sea levels and storms started to eat away at the coastal areas which consisted mainly of peatlands. In this period the inlet

700-514: The continent of Africa as surrounded by sea and not extending very far south. The editio princeps of Mela was published at Milan in 1471; the first critical edition was by Joachim Vadian (Wien, 1518), superseded by those of Johann Heinrich Voss (1658), Johann Friedrich Gronovius (1685 and 1696), A. Gronovius (1722 and 1728), and Tzschucke (1806–1807), in seven parts (Leipzig; the most elaborate of all); G. Paithey's (Berlin, 1867) for its text. The English translation by Arthur Golding (1585)

735-752: The folk of the northern temperate regions from the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe , Asia and Africa , he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great (except Ptolemy ) he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian and Arabian ( Red Sea ) gulfs on the south. His Indian conceptions are inferior to those of some earlier Greek writers; he follows Eratosthenes in supposing that country to occupy

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770-451: The inlet, the Zuiderzee became a volatile cauldron of water, frequently resulting in flooding and the loss of ships. For example, on 18 November 1421, a seawall at the Zuiderzee dike broke, which flooded 72 villages and killed about 10,000 people. This was the Second St. Elizabeth's flood . The process of creating polders had developed to a point by 1667 that the damming of the Zuiderzee

805-474: The name of the body of water which lay there long ago. Over time these lakes gradually eroded their soft peat shores and spread (a process known as waterwolf ). Some part of this area of water was later called the Vlie ; it probably flowed into the sea through what is now the Vliestroom channel between the islands of Vlieland and Terschelling . During a period of rising sea level between 250 and 600 CE,

840-470: The name was transmitted by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela in describing this region. In his treatise on geography of 44 AD, Pomponius speaks of a Flevo Lacus . He writes: "The northern branch of the Rhine widens as Lake Flevo, and encloses an island of the same name, and then as a normal river flows to the sea". Other sources rather speak of Flevum , which could be related to today's Vlie (Vliestroom), i.e.

875-466: The north of the Zuiderzee (cf. North Sea). In the 20th century the majority of the Zuiderzee was closed off from the North Sea by the construction of the Afsluitdijk , leaving the mouth of the inlet to become part of the Wadden Sea . The salt water inlet changed into a fresh water lake now called the IJsselmeer ( IJssel Lake) after the river that drains into it, and by means of drainage and polders , an area of some 1,500 km (580 sq mi)

910-472: The seaway between the Dutch islands of Vlieland and Terschelling. This last name is grammatically more probable for a geographical indication, which is why it is assumed that Pomponius confused the declension of the word giving the name Flevo. In fact the Vlie formed outfall from the lake into the North Sea . In the second half of the twentieth century the Flevopolders and a new province, Flevoland , took

945-709: The south-eastern angle of Asia, whence the coast trended northwards to Scythia, and then swept round westward to the Caspian Sea. As usual, he places the Riphean Mountains and the Hyperboreans near the Scythian Ocean. In western Europe his knowledge (as was natural in a Spanish subject of Imperial Rome) was somewhat in advance of the Greek geographers. He defines the western coast-line of Spain and Gaul and its indentation by

980-599: The subject in Classical Latin . Little is known of Pomponius except his name and birthplace—the small town of Tingentera or Cingentera (identified as Iulia Traducta ) in southern Spain , on Algeciras Bay (Mela ii. 6, § 96; but the text is here corrupt). The date of his writing may be approximately fixed by his allusion (iii. 6 § 49) to a proposed British expedition of the reigning emperor, almost certainly that of Claudius in AD 43. That this passage cannot refer to Julius Caesar

1015-486: The year 1500. It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and is described by the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity , and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures." Except for the geographical parts of Pliny 's Historia naturalis (where Mela is cited as an important authority), the De situ orbis is the only formal treatise on

1050-475: Was a shallow bay of the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands . It extended about 100 km (60 miles) inland and at most 50 km (30 miles) wide, with an overall depth of about 4 to 5 metres (13–16 feet) and a coastline of about 300 km (200 miles). It covered 5,000 km (1,900 sq mi). Its name is Dutch for "southern sea", indicating that the name originates in Friesland , to

1085-553: Was one, "Codanovia", of pre-eminent size; this name reappears in Pliny the Elder 's work as Scatinavia . Codanovia and Scatinavia were both Latin renderings of the Proto-Germanic * Skaðinawio , the Germanic name for Scandinavia . Mela's descriptive method follows ocean coasts, in the manner of a periplus , probably because it was derived from the accounts of navigators. He begins at

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1120-570: Was proposed, although a feasible method did not appear until the 20th century. The Netherlands was part of the First French Empire between 1810 and 1813. A département was formed in 1811 and named as Zuyderzée after the Zuiderzee, whose territory roughly corresponded to the present provinces of North Holland and Utrecht . In 1928, the 6-meter and 8-meter sailing events for the Amsterdam Summer Olympics were held on

1155-461: Was reclaimed as land. This land eventually became the province of Flevoland . Part of the IJsselmeer was also divided into the Markermeer . In classical times there was already a body of water in this location, called Lake Flevo (Flevo Lacus ) by Roman authors. This was the central and largest lake in a region filled with a mixture of lowland and freshwater lakes occupying the area later filled by

1190-498: Was referred to as the Almere , indicating it was still more of a lake, but the mouth and size of the inlet were much widened in the 12th century and especially after a disastrous flood in 1282 broke through the barrier dunes near Texel . The disaster marked the rise of Amsterdam on the southwestern end of the bay, since the seagoing traffic of the Baltic trade could now visit. Lake Almere

1225-425: Was stopped to the south and east by the high sandy shores of Gooi , Veluwe , Voorst , and Gasterland in the provinces of Utrecht , Gelderland , Overysel , and Friesland respectively. The even more massive St. Lucia's flood occurred 14 December 1287, when the seawalls broke during a storm, killing approximately 50,000 to 80,000 people in the fifth largest flood in recorded history. The flood occurred during

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