Fens
From Srafopedia
In Our World
The Fens are an area of former wetlands in the counties of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk in eastern England. The region lies west and south of The Wash. It now covers approximately 1,300 km² (320,000 acres), but in 1911 the Encyclopaedia Britannica estimated its extent as being considerably over half a million acres (2,000 km²). Geologically, the fenlands are a silted-up bay of the North Sea that embraces the lower drainage basins of the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse. Wisbech is known as the "Capital of the Fens".
Ecologically, a fen is a nutrient-rich freshwater environment in which dead but undecayed plant matter has accumulated to the point where most or all of the remaining vegetation is emergent.
300 years ago, the Fens were similar to the Florida Everglades, a large area of low-lying land, though in a cooler climate. The Fens and fenmen have their own history and distinctive cultural characteristics. When need be, a few of the native fenmen moved about nimbly on stilts (the "stilt-walkers"). They opposed incursions by outsiders and defended their valuable traditional rights of commonage, turf cutting, fishing and fowling. The fenman's way of life was different from that of others so outsiders were sometimes suspicious of him. The aristocratic Hereward Leofricsson, later called Hereward the Wake, who was raised on the fen margin, opposed the loss of his inheritance to the Norman incomers in around the year 1070.
From Wikipedia
In Lyra's World
The Fens are the fastness of the Western Gyptians, who are ruled by John Faa. The Gyptians hide Lyra in the Fens in Northern Lights/The Golden Compass.
