The Deelen is a beautiful area in the province of Friesland, Netherlands.
Blood, sweat and tears sacrificed the peat workers a century ago to get peat above ground. Immediately north of Heerenveen led this hard work not only carloads peat in the stove but also rich nature: the excavated peat is now a mosaic of water, reeds, swamp bushes and small, narrow grasslands.
Those grasslands are the legakkers which the peat drying was placed in the bog holes. Also, you can still see the dikes that protected the polder against the rising water from the Middle Sea, an inlet that ran through Friesland in the Middle Ages. Despite the dikes Middelzee flooded polders regularly with a layer of clay deposited bet. Thus a landscape that is comparable to the salt marshes along the Wadden Sea. And that in the heart of Friesland!