Bonus: A Traumatic Relationship with Water
There are few landscapes as immediately identifiable as those of the Low Countries. Calling it a “land” scape is problematic, however, as it could just as easily be called a “water” scape. The meandering rivers, the green blocks of soggy land separated by canals and ditches and a row of dunes down the coast all lend to an overwhelming understanding of why one of the modern nations that make up the region is called the “nether” lands. They most certainly are low. The name “Flanders” derives from a very old German word flaum, meaning flood - “flood lands”. The Low Countries are a huge wetland, a vast river delta known as the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, a place where land and water meet and interact. As such, the societies which developed here have often reflected their engagement with the rivers which flow from far-away mountains and the seas which consistently pummel the coastline with an ancient ferocity. Living on these water-logged lands has presented them with opportunities for trade, urbanisation, agriculture and much more, but has also meant living under the constant threat of devastating and deadly floods. These events have been scarred into the psyche of the societies there and their impacts resonate through to the present day, like a kind of collective, multi-generational trauma. There is a concept in popular psychology that, in processing trauma or grief, one goes through five stages: Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression; Acceptance. Although this idea is oversimplified and doesn’t take into account the wide ranging emotional experiences individual humans go through, we still think it provides a useful framework through which to look at how, collectively and over a span of time, the peoples inhabiting the low countries have dealt with the cultural and social trauma of repetitive flood disasters that have drowned entire towns, swept away large tracts of land and taken hundreds of thousands of lives. In this episode of the Low Countries Radio, we are going to go through these five stages (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance) and take a look at how they can be applied to the relationship between humans and water in this part of the world.