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 engineering knowledge and their Dutch law. They settle in Sietland next to the "Sassischen" (Saxons), who live on the higher bank areas. The fear of the floods unites them. "Who does not want to die, courage" is law and where the dike judge puts the spade in the dike, the yard is lost ...

In the Old Country we feel these medieval roots and the Dutch heritage everyday. The Hollerweg leads us to remarkable traces of the Hollerkolonisation in the Altländer cultural landscape. We call these examples "time windows". They allow a glimpse into history, make the invisible alive and describe "the way" - that is the way - why the old land became as it is. All examples represent one or more of the six themes that characterize the Old Country: