After \u201call you can eat\u201d and \u201cmy wife doesn\u2019t understand me\u201d there are few phrases more evocative, more redolent of mystery and desire than \u201clost city\u201d. Which is what the mediaeval German city of Rungholt is now, having transitioned from \u201cfound city\u201d to \u201clost city\u201d under a massive storm-surge that swept across the North Sea on January 16, 1362.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, given that one or more of Rungholt\u2019s roughly 2,000 inhabitants found the city pretty much every waking minute of every God-given day before this event, it is unlikely that they referred to it as a \u201cfound city\u201d, preferring to call it, simply, a \u201ccity\u201d.<\/p>\n
Fragments of life in Rungholt \u2013 bones, bricks, pots and tools \u2013 were still being washed up until the early 20th Century. Found objects from a lost city.<\/p>\n
The storm itself warranted a name at the time, the Grote Mandrenke \u2013\u00a0Low Saxon for \u201cThe Great Drowning of Men\u201d \u2013 which is more awesome and terrible a name than it would have been given had it occurred today, when it would no doubt have been called something like Atlantic Gale Beryl, or European Stormtide Siobhan. The Grote Mandrenke swept across England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, killing at least 25,000 people. It created new islands by splitting land from mainland or breaking whole ones up into component parts and swallowed towns whole.\u00a0Rungholt\u2019s legendary wealth was, of course, of little use in the face of the storm.<\/p>\n
Nineteenth Century German poet, Detlef von Liliencron, imagines Rungholt\u2019s last moments as he sails across its sunken location:<\/p>\n
Ein einziger Schrei \u2013 die Stadt ist versunken,
\nund Hunderttausende sind ertrunken.
\nWo gestern noch L\u00e4rm und lustiger Tisch,
\nschwamm andern Tags der stumme Fisch.
\nHeut bin ich \u00fcber Rungholt gefahren,
\ndie Stadt ging unter vor sechshundert Jahren.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A cry \u2013 the city is submerged,
\nand hundreds of thousands have drowned.
\nWhere yesterday there was noise and merriment at table
\nswam next day the dumb fish. —
\nToday I travelled over Rungholt,
\nthe city went under six hundred years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIs it possible that, like that other sunken city Atlantis, Rungholt might offer some hidden wisdom to be gleaned by those of us who dwell in the yet-undrowned future? Salient lessons about human transience and vulnerability, perhaps. A demonstration of the unleashed ferocity of the climate system and a warning not to feed the beasts of ocean and atmosphere with more and more energy as part of an almost unhinged pursuit of wealth.<\/p>\n
Sadly, I have the feeling that more cities will go under before we are done.<\/p>\n