Mark In The Sea: The Persistence of Islands of Doggerland

 

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Doggerland is the name given to the land which covered what is now the southern North Sea, at the time of the last Ice Age. It connected the east coast of England to what is now the Dutch, German and Danish coasts. You can find out more about it on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland The area was settled by farmers and is thought to have been very fertile with a number of rivers running through it, feeding either into what is now the English Channel or the northern North Sea. Archaeological remains have been being fished up from the region under the sea, since 1931. Modern technology and continued finds keep expanding our knowledge of the region. New finds often trigger newspaper articles and claims that the region was a kind of British 'Atlantis'.

Following the last Ice Age sea levels rose and the land was inundated. However, as late 6225–6170 BCE there were still a number of islands of the kind shown on the front cover of my book. These, though, were submerged following the three Storegga Slides, vast geological movements in what is now the coast of northern Norway sending out tsunamis across the region. Not only did they drown the remaining areas of Doggerland but they altered the British coastline too. While this event might not have been the origin of Atlantis myths, one can imagine the human tragedy for the people living on these islands with their settlements and culture almost erased from existence, only to be recovered in bits and pieces millennia later.

I have occasionally done geological rather than social or political 'what if?' stories and this seemed like a good one to do. Stephen Baxter had published a trilogy of books, 2010-12, showing people on Doggerland stemming inundation, but his books had only covered up to the Iron Age. I was interested in seeing what might have happened if the islands had continued right up to present day so my stories run from 12 BCE to 2017. Rather than trying to have a story covering centuries, I decided on the approach of a 'fix up' book, i.e. a series of short stories, in my case 19, connected by a theme. This has quite often been an approach for alternate history books. I just have to mention 'Pavane' (1968) by Keith Roberts, 'Agent of Byzantium' (19877/94) by Harry Turtledove, 'The Years of Rice and Salt' (2002) by Kim Stanley Robinson  and 'Roma Eterna' (2003) by Robert Silverberg, amongst others, to show the standing of such books in this genre. 

I was also influenced by 'Ulverton' (1992) by Adam Thorpe, set in a fictional English village 1650-1989, seeing it through a range of characters and indeed very diverse forms of story telling. I have not gone as far as him in the formats of my stories, but have tried to include some variety of formats, e.g. in the form of a diary covering the impact of elements of the Spanish Armada being washed up among the islands. That did cause challenges I had not foreseen as in 1588, Spain was using the Gregorian calendar (was we use today) but England was still using the Julian calendar. Historical accounts in English and Spanish tend to refer to the dates by the calendar prevalent in the respective countries at the time which as you can imagine causes confusion when you are a poor author jumping back and forth between the two. Throughout I have tried to bring in actual historical figures to give some implication of the impact the islands would have on wider European history, but especially in north-western Europe.

For the geographical basis of my alternative, I took that which was published in ‘Ocean Modelling’ in 2014 and presented to the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in May 2014 by Alexandros Avdis, Gareth Collins, Jon Hill, Stephan Kramer and Matthew Piggott. This provided me a range of different sized islands to work with. I drew on what we knew of the flora and fauna of Doggerland to suggest what might have lived on in terms of the islands, for example, the deer. We know deer migrated across Doggerland, but I envisaged a smaller breed being trapped on the islands and so ending up a bit like the Svalbard reindeer. Looking at the trees grown in neighbouring regions and the animals, then led me to think about the food which people would eat. I imagine as with Denmark, fish would be important and indeed as we know happened in Roman times, such as in southern Spain, whales would be fished. This led me to invent the 'national dish' of the islands - smoked mackerel, oatcakes and pickled cabbage, influenced by a mixture of Scottish and Danish dishes. In terms of other resources, we know that natural gas lies under the region and it also seemed possible given what is found on nearby coasts, that iron ore could be mined on the islands too. This allowed them not to become backwaters in the industrial age.

Politically, perhaps I have pushed what might be deemed feasible a little further. It certainly seemed reasonable that the Romans would reach and settle the islands before they took on Britain, especially given their exploration along the 'Dutch' and 'German' North Sea coasts. It seemed fair that given William the Conqueror was almost defeated in Sussex in 1066, his forces, might have been thrown back from the island and so they became more associated with the Low Countries, though continuing a connection to Norman England. The connection to England sees stories around the time of the Anarchy and later the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (formerly the English Civil War). However, the connection to the continent means a greater involvement in the French Revolution and Napoleon's plans for expansion.

Work on the Camstonisland which was very active on Reddit in the early 2010s envisaged a single island in the North Sea. It is worthwhile checking out given the Low German dialect, flags, etc. which have been worked up for this alternative. Another similar one are the islands of Caproney, a couple of long thin ones with some smaller islands, but I have not seen more detail on these. I named them Yonisleland in the modern version of the name. While the islands in my book have tended to have received Frisian names, I have envisaged that English is the predominant language though residents of the islands are fluent in more languages, especially Dutch, German and Danish than most residents of Britain.

One step which might be challenged is that when Elector Georg of Hanover became King George I of Britain in 1714, the islands were seen as being more part of his German territory than his British and then like Hanover were overrun by the Prussians in 1866. This would have brought Prussian control right close to the British coast and while I have not done it in this book, this no doubt would have had a great impact on naval warfare between Britain and Germany in the First World War.  The islands do come back to Britain in 1919 only to be invaded by Nazi Germany at the time of the taking of Denmark and then the Netherlands in 1940, so exposing more of the United Kingdom to Nazi occupation beyond the Channel Islands.

The stories were written roughly in chronological order, so I came to the modern ones while the Brexit Referendum was happening and then I was encouraged to envisage how the residents of the islands would react to the break from the EU. I hope I give a fair reflection for people who would have a much stronger connection to mainland Europe and indeed particularly Scandinavia. I also had the sense that the people of these islands facing the wrath of a rump of the North Sea would be like the Scots in many ways and so similarly be reasonably supportive of the EU. Another parallel is in the independence movement which is shown, as happened in Scotland and Wales, receiving a revival in the 1970s, but never rising to a sufficient level to lead to a full secession.

I have tried to make all the stories different but engaging. I know some readers rail against short stories as 'going nowhere', but I do think they are useful with alternate history in allowing the reader to see multiple facets of the alternative that the author has created, especially when, as in this case, the repercussions of the change appear over centuries. I also know that there are readers who believe that the only 'real' alternate history books are ones about warfare. This book has scenes of battles, notably fighting against a Viking raid, a Norman invasion, French-influenced revolutionaries, the Prussians and Nazis, but it also shows less violent, though hopefully as engaging times in the islands' histories. The advantage of a fix-up anthology is if you do not like a particular set of characters or scenario, you do not have to read long before another one turns up!