Marsklandet

In South-west Jutland, the countryside opens up, becoming a giant expanse of flat land before you reach the Wadden Sea coast. The only features on the landscape are a few houses and farms, along with a couple of windswept trees. The only structures to break up the landscape are the man-made dikes along the rivers and the coast, and the earthworks on which the typical houses and farms stand. In short, the marshland is the result of hundreds of years of work to hold back the Wadden Sea – resulting in a landscape of lush seaside meadows.

The first dikes were built more than 500 years ago. An area surrounded by dikes is known as a “polder”. The newest polder in the Danish Wadden Sea area is called “Margrethe Kog” and
stems from 1978-80. The most westerly polders by the Wadden Sea are used as pasture for
thousands of sheep and cattle.