Schok­land was a penin­su­la that by the 15th cen­tu­ry had become an island. Occu­pied and then aban­doned as the sea encroached, it had to be evac­u­at­ed in 1859. But fol­low­ing the drain­ing of the Zuider Zee, it has, since the 1940s, formed part of the land reclaimed from the sea. Schok­land has ves­tiges of human habi­ta­tion going back to pre­his­toric times. It sym­bol­izes the hero­ic, age-old strug­gle of the peo­ple of the Nether­lands against the encroach­ment of the waters.