The Dutch communities shaped by water

The fact that this country was once so disjointed, cleaved through the middle by the treacherous Southern Sea and edged with a coastline crumbling into islands, accounts in part for the distinctions between these often-remote communities that were only united when the water between them was later reclaimed as land. Today, more than 10% of Dutch households still speak a regional dialect.

Celebrating this diversity is Nelson’s new book, Between the Sea and the Sky, which explores the history, traditional costume and landscapes of 20 regions of the Netherlands through storytelling, hand-drawn maps and more than 300 photographs.

The pages take readers past the Netherlands’ vivid green polders with their fertile peat soil; onto the arid desert dunes hidden in the heart of the country; and into the salty harbours on its fringes that feed the nation with fish and established lucrative trading routes.

The national identity of the Netherlands, where a fifth of the country was wrung from the sea, is as shaped by its waters as by the land itself. The book’s title pays tribute to the generations of Dutch people living a precarious life at the mercy of water and weather in a dazzling but difficult landscape.

Marken, Noord-Holland

Marken, a former island just 20km north-east of Amsterdam that’s been connected to the mainland since 1957 by a wisp of causeway, was the first place to open its doors to Nelson. He had already photographed this picturesque settlement of half-timbered houses and white lift bridges back in 2014 and, after a series of visits to re-establish relations, a second session was scheduled.

Here, as elsewhere, the villagers assisted in the shoot, holding the reflectors and making it, said Nelson, “a communal experience”. The book’s cover image (pictured at the top of the article), where villagers dressed as wedding guests and a bride loom over the land and sea, intentionally places them on a pedestal. “I’m often kneeling in front of people,” Nelson said. “I make myself very small and give the subject the authority… They are the one dictating. It’s up to them whether or not I see them, whether or not I take the camera out.”

For participant Marieke Zeeman (pictured third from left above), Nelson’s project coincided with a family tragedy. The klederdracht (traditional clothing) she owned, she said, no longer matched her emotions. Since klederdrachthas not been daily wear on Marken for almost a century, friends and neighbours came together to assemble a mourning outfit for her for the shoot. “Just like the old days, we shared our clothing, we shared our knowledge, we helped each other to dress up. The photo shoot created a buzz and a sense of unity in the village,” she said.

The peninsula has more than 30 different traditional costumes – all handmade – including five stages of mourning dress, from darkest black through to purple. “The clothing of Marken is very nuanced,” Zeeman said. “For every festival and important life moment, we have a different style.”

Marken, explained Zeeman, is a microcosm of the Netherlands’ relationship with water. “The sea is Marken’s friend and enemy. A lot of people made their money as fishermen and mariners… [but] there were a lot of floods, sometimes with death as a result. On the one hand, it’s all you live for because it’s your bread. On the other hand, it can take everything overnight.”

When the Afsluitdijk dam was completed in 1937, creating a lake where once there was sea, the floods finally abated but the fishing industry collapsed. The villagers adapted, turning to farming or finding jobs on the mainland.

In the harbour, the houses built on poles to prevent flooding are still visible today. “I think the Marken people over the ages showed resilience in finding a way to live with the water,” Zeeman continued. “Every family has past memories of what the water took; even our names [Zeeman means sailor] are connected to water.”

Zeeland

Two hundred kilometres south-west of Marken, a lighthouse built into a 15th-Century church tower  keeps watch over the small city of Westkapelle on the former island of Walcheren.

Located in the province of Zeeland, a cluster of former islands each with its own dialect, this important trading post has fought off Viking raiders and Spanish reformers, survived the bombing of its dykes in 1944, and withstood the floods of 1953 that claimed almost 2,000 lives and are known here simply as De Ramp (The Disaster).

The family of Piet Minderhoud, a fourth-generation goldsmith and a collector of traditional clothing and jewellery, have lived in the region for centuries. Minderhoud, who also sat for Nelson, is the only remaining Zeelander still making gold oorijzers (ear irons), the shiny symbols of wealth, worn countrywide, that keep in place the starched white bonnets seen throughout Between the Sea and the Sky.

Nowhere are the irons and bonnets larger and showier than in Zuid-Beveland, east of Walcheren, where Asta Shouwenaar (pictured above) was photographed. But the vanity on this former island, isolated from the mainland until the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s brought dams and railways, was kept in check by the region’s rough weather. “In Zeeland, it is very windy and it’s very difficult to wear such a muts (bonnet),” Minderhoud said. “There’s a lot of starch in it and when it becomes wet it collapses.”

“Zeeland has barely changed in the last 100 years,” he added. “Everything which makes the province what it is today, has to do with water. The sea is part of our life and every day it is different. When the wind is from the south-west, the dunes cast dust over the village and the sand lies in the streets and in our gardens – a bit like snow. [Sometimes] the salty air from the sea, it’s on our windows and we can’t see outside because there’s a thick layer of salt on the glass.”

Against this background of sand and sea, several of Nelson’s Zeeland photographs place knollen centre stage. These giant farm horses were central to the livelihood of a province where today three-quarters of the land is still devoted to food production.

Achieving these dramatic beach scenes required patience. “We spent an enormous amount of time sitting, talking, waiting… and split seconds where we would run outside when the sun would peek through the storm clouds,” recalled Nelson. “Because the majority of the Netherlands is coastal, the light is continually changing and is volatile in its unpredictability. But in that unpredictability, there’s often magic moments.”

Nelson’s handmade camera, with its challenging 8 x 10-inch format, also prescribed the pace. “If you use analogue cameras and ambient light, everything slows down. And in the slowing down, you make a much more intimate meeting,” he said. Indoors, Nelson took inspiration from the Dutch Masters, using window light reflectors to produce what he calls “this very soft, often mottled light”, the hallmark of painters such as Vermeer and De Hooch.

Friesland

That famous Dutch light was also at play during Nelson’s winter trip to chilly Friesland in the north, casting a golden hue over its vast flatlands and frozen lakes. For this province of ice-skating fanatics, the colder the better. As the ice thickens, excitement mounts at the prospect of the legendary Elfstedentocht, a 200km ice skating race through 11 Frisian towns.

Cold is part of the Frisian lexicon. There are numerous words for ice, explained Anke Bijlsma, whose northeast Friesland farm was photographed by Nelson (pictured above). “There’s lumpy ice, dark ice – that’s the most beautiful one – snow ice, bubble ice…”

When Nelson visited, Bijlsma organised a big meal in a church that houses the theatre company she runs. The local tipple, a herbal liqueur called Beerenburg, was circulating freely. “We had so much fun,” she remembered. “In Friesland, we are used to cold weather, but we also know how to warm up.”

The north is more than just a place to set up wind farms or extract gas, Bijlsma added. Not far from her home, when the tide is low, shrimpers can be seen sieving their catch. And if you time it right, you can hike over the mudflats all the way to Engelsmanplaat, an uninhabited island populated by seals and birdlife. “You can walk for hours. It’s really beautiful,” she said.

The region’s extraordinary star-filled skies make it equally impressive at night. “There’s not a lot of light pollution and it’s amazingly dark,” said Bijlsma, who regularly takes a moment to absorb the incredible views.

“When you see the horizon on the sea dyke, every little or big problem in your head blows away. You can stare into nothing: only sea and sky.”

Our Unique World is a BBC Travel series that celebrates what makes us different and distinctive by exploring offbeat subcultures and obscure communities around the globe.

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