Northern Frisa – a literary-geographical observation

Kathrin Winkler and Kim Seifert

Abstract: This text provides an insight into the methods of the literary scholars within the project. Regarding literary texts set in Northern Frisia, the answer to the question, where the plot takes place, appears to be quite simple: on the western coast of Schleswig-Holstein. It is in this region, where dikes, the North Sea, and the mud flats can be found. But while the fictional geography of the text as a whole is very specific, the single settings often seem to be rather vague. Sometimes a real-world correspondent can be found by using biographical information about the author, but this can also be misleading, e.g. when the author has transformed the setting (for instance by relocating it). Furthermore, it is essential to keep in mind that the landscape of Northern Frisia has constantly been changing over the years. A setting in a text from the 1850s, which was, at that time, located directly on the coast, might be part of the inland today.

All this information has to be gathered from different sources and brought onto the map in order to obtain results about the structure of the particular fictionalized landscape. In the case of Northern Frisia the results so far show that the model region has to be divided in several subregions, which are evoked in their particular originality. Within each subregion the single settings are almost exchangeable. These observations raise the question, whether the spatial descriptions of these subregions can be distinguished.

To answer this question, a large amount of texts has to be taken into account to get significant results. Therefore the work is far from being finished…