Noordoostpolder and UNESCO World Heritage Schokland

The Landscape

About eighty years ago, the Noordoostpolder was created. After draining the former Zuiderzee, engineers carefully designed the new land. Straight canals, neat roads, and the central town of Emmeloord surrounded by ten villages, each with its own character and purpose. The focus was on agriculture, but there was also space for homes, work, and nature. Today, the area has grown into a varied landscape with colorful fields, green meadows, distinctive rows of trees, sheltered farms, and lush forests. The open space and orderly layout give the Noordoostpolder its unique charm.

Schokland became the very first Dutch UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995. It was once a barren, marshy island in the wild Zuiderzee. Since the reclamation of the Noordoostpolder in 1942, it has stood on dry land where the history of the Netherlands is literally embedded in the soil. Today, the former island is surrounded by a wide and varied polder landscape with wet meadows, fields, orchards, open water, and young forests. What was once sea is now a unique part of the Netherlands where nature, heritage, and agriculture come together.