The region between Stade and Hamburg in the glacial valley of the Elbe, which we today know as "Three Miles Altes Land" and "largest closed fruit-growing area in Northern Europe", would naturally be flooded twice a day at high tide. In the early 12th century Dutch follow the call of the Bremen archbishop. With painstaking manual work with a shovel and a cart, they turn swamp into fertile marshes. They build dikes and drainage systems and receive their own land. They bring along the hydraulic eng