Griend (; West Frisian: ''Gryn'') is a small uninhabited

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

island in the Wadden Sea, lying around 12 kilometres south of Terschelling. It is one of the West Frisian Islands, and belongs to the municipality of Terschelling. The island currently has an area of around 0.1 km².

History

In the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, the island was inhabited, and on it a walled settlement and a

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whi ...

could be found. As a result of continuous erosion of the coast, Griend became smaller over time. In 1287, the settlement was almost completely destroyed as a consequence of St. Lucia's flood. The city was thereafter abandoned and from that time until the eighteenth century, Griend was inhabited by a few farmers, who built their houses on artificial hills. Around 1800, Griend still had an area of 0.25 km², but the island was moving to the southeast at a speed of 7 metres a year. By that time, all of its inhabitants had abandoned the island, and from then on it was used by inhabitants of Terschelling as a grazing area for sheep, and for the making of hay. The eggs of

gull Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. They are most closely related to the terns and skimmers and only distantly related to auks, and even more distantly to waders. Until the 21st century ...

s and

tern Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated as a subgroup of the family Laridae which includes gulls and skimmers and consists of e ...

s were also gathered there for consumption. In 1916, the grazing rights on the island were bought by the

Vereniging Natuurmonumenten Vereniging tot Behoud van Natuurmonumenten in Nederland ( en, Society for Preservation of Nature Monuments in the Netherlands), also known as Vereniging Natuurmonumenten, is a Dutch nature conservation organization founded in 1905 by Jacobus Pi ...

,Griend

. a union devoted to the protection of nature, which also tried to prevent the gathering of eggs by guarding the bird colonies on the island. After the

Afsluitdijk The ''Afsluitdijk'' (; fry, Ofslútdyk; nds-nl, Ofsluutdiek; en, "Closure Dyke") is a major dam and causeway in the Netherlands. It was constructed between 1927 and 1932 and runs from Den Oever in North Holland province to the village of ...

was completed in 1933, the rate of erosion increased even more. However, the island has survived to the present day, though it is smaller than before, and its current location is to the southeast of what its location was in the Middle Ages.

Griend now

Nowadays, the island is uninhabited, with the exception of a cabin used in summer by birdwatchers and biologists. Griend is not accessible to the general public. Because Griend is unprotected by dykes, the island is slowly moving eastward. To protect the island and prevent it from vanishing altogether, some measures have been taken: along its southern edge, a few dams have been built, and, around 1990, the island was strengthened by building a low sand dyke along its north side. Since then, the process of erosion has changed into a process of gradual growth.

Fauna

The largest colony of

Sandwich tern The Sandwich tern (''Thalasseus sandvicensis'') is a tern in the family Laridae. It is very closely related to the lesser crested tern (''T. bengalensis''), Chinese crested tern (''T. bernsteini''), Cabot's tern (''T. acuflavidus''), and elega ...

s in Western Europe can be found on Griend: every year, around 10,000 pairs breed on the island. Among others, the

common tern The common tern (''Sterna hirundo'') is a seabird in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar distribution, its four subspecies breeding in temperate and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia and North America. It is strongly migrator ...

, Arctic tern,

common eider The common eider (pronounced ) (''Somateria mollissima''), also called St. Cuthbert's duck or Cuddy's duck, is a large ( in body length) sea-duck that is distributed over the northern coasts of Europe, North America and eastern Siberia. It breed ...

, common shelduck,

Eurasian oystercatcher The Eurasian oystercatcher (''Haematopus ostralegus'') also known as the common pied oystercatcher, or palaearctic oystercatcher, or (in Europe) just oystercatcher, is a wader in the oystercatcher bird family Haematopodidae. It is the most widesp ...

common redshank The common redshank or simply redshank (''Tringa totanus'') is a Eurasian wader in the large family Scolopacidae. Taxonomy The common redshank was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his ...

, and occasionally the

short-eared owl The short-eared owl (''Asio flammeus'') is a widespread grassland species in the family Strigidae. Owls belonging to genus ''Asio'' are known as the eared owls, as they have tufts of feathers resembling mammalian ears. These "ear" tufts may or ...

also breed on the island. During the building of the sand dike, the island was colonized by the

wood mouse The wood mouse (''Apodemus sylvaticus'') is a murid rodent native to Europe and northwestern Africa. It is closely related to the yellow-necked mouse (''Apodemus flavicollis'') but differs in that it has no band of yellow fur around the neck, ha ...

. Griend is currently managed by the

References

External links

* {{Authority control West Frisian Islands Islands of Friesland Uninhabited islands of the Netherlands Nature reserves in the Netherlands Ramsar sites in the Netherlands