Is it an island? Is it a sandbank? No, it’s a Hallig, one of about 10 tiny wafer-flat ‘islets’ scattered across the Schleswig-Holstein's Wadden Sea National Park. In the Middle Ages some 50 Halligen existed, but the sea has swallowed up most of them. Up to 60 times a year, floods drown the beaches and meadows, leaving the few reed-thatched farms stranded on the artificial knolls, or ‘wharves’, that they’re built on.
