Blog
ResourceS for Adaptation to rising sea levels and sinking cities.
This is a blog containing images, stories, songs, rituals and traditions related to flooding and flood protection from the cultural heritage of coasts worldwide. It is continuously expanded and meant as a free repository to be used by anyone working to increase resilience and well-being for front line communitiies.
Please browse through the posts or search for themes, places or centuries using the Categories. Any email comments, hints or repostings are very much appreciated by the author.
Time and Tide Bells
Since 2008 artist and bell-maker Marcus Vergette has been developing the multi-site installation series Time and Tide Bells in various coastal spots...
The Bells of Aberdovey
A common theme in Northern European flood myths are the church bells of submerged cities. This motive can be found all along the ccoasts of...
“The sea has covered the plain of Gwydneu”
A Welsh legend tells the story of the sunken land Gwydneu (also known as "Gwydno" and later Cantre'r Gwaelod, "antref Gwaelod", "Cantref y...
FloodZone – an ongoing visual research of life in the tidal zone
FloodZone is an ongoing photographic series by Anastasia Samoylova, responding to the environmental changes in coastal cities of South Florida. The...
The Mermaids of Weeki Wachee
In a theme park near Tampa, FL, you can see mermaids perform for you live since 1947. https://youtu.be/dUHPxsP8dzw The producers write on their...
“For now, perhaps more than ever before, the past is relevant to the future.”
In the introduction to his book "Worlds in Shadow" from 2022 Australian Geographer Patrick Nunn writes: "The stories from Haida Gwaii and Aboriginal...
The woman in the fur coat who brought the flood
Australian Geographer Patrick Nunn opens a book of his with the following story told by a Chief of the Haida people of Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen...
Man made flooding in “Tintin and the Lake of Sharks”
The Belgian animation movie and comic book from 1972 and 1973 is set around an artificial lake in a fictious mountain state in the Balkans. We do...
Covers of “Tintin and the Lake of Sharks”
This classic Tintin comic story around an underwater city in a lake appeared first as a movie and a year later as a comic book. While the movie...
Blake and Mortimer: The Atlantis Mystery
In the Belgian classic comic series Blake and Mortimer there appeared in 1955 an adventure set in the mythical city Atlantis. It's the seventh story...
“Bringing Humanity full circle back into the Sea”
In an essay in which cultural historian Helen M. Rozwadowski traces the intellectual climate surrounding Jacques Cousteaus aquatic utopias, which he...
A Chinese Flood and Creation Myth
(This text is from the site by the University of Pittsburg.) "The Miao people in Southern China have no written records, but they have many legends...
Cohabitation and technical failure
Berlin once had the biggest, cylindric aquarium in the world, the Auqua Dome. In fact it was a hotel lobby dome, a modern cathedral with a giant...
Flooded Buddha
UNESCO World Heritage site in Ayutthaya (Thailand) province - inundated with floodwaters on October 10, 2011. More than 250 Thais have died after...
Solastalgia
In his book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World (2019), Glenn Albrecht elaborated the term ‘solastalgia’. A portmanteau...
Jeff Goodell: The Water Will Come
Lecture by US journalist Jeff Goodell on his book "The Water Will Come" with alot of examples and images around rising sea level and sinking cities....
The case for culture
In a very nice, comprehensive and extensive article, Dutch author Thijs Weststeijn, describes the role of culture in forming a climate conscience....
Why water?
Most ancient cultures share the idea of creation out of water. Be it a cosmic ocean, primordial waters or a more abstract idea of fluid, amorphous...
Churning the Ocean of Milk
In Hindu cosmology there are seven oceans. One of them is the ocean of milk. In one of the most colorful episodes of Hindu scripture, the Samudra...
Devi – the universal truth resides deep in the ocean
The Devi Upanishad is one of 19 sanskrit texts that lay out the philosophical concept of Hinduism. Written somtime before 1400 CE, the text...
Colapesce
One of the best known folktales from Sicilly is the story of the amphibic boy Colapesce, who saves the city Messina (or the island of sicily...