Hermann Schmidt, Sylt

North Frisian literature as literature in North Frisian has produced a remarkable number and range of works in relation to the initial situation of the language and the number of speakers. North Frisian has or had ten dialects, some of which are hardly mutually intelligible, and which for a long time had very little contact with each other because of the geographical conditions. There has never been a cultural center in North Frisia that could have unified the language or literature. Because of this fragmentation, literary products even within the North Frisian language group have to this day had only a very limited reach, confined almost exclusively to a single dialect area. Therefore, in principle, one can speak of several North Frisian literatures. Thus, literatures with their own emphases and traditions have developed in North Frisia on the island of Sylt, on the island of Helgoland, on Föhr and Amrum, as well as on the mainland - in varying forms.