The largest town on the island is Wyk on its eastern coast. In addition there are sixteen tiny hamlets, three of them with very old churches from the 12th and 13th centuries. The native population speaks, besides German, a local idiom of the Frisian language known as F?ring or Fering. A local peculiarity is that almost all place names end with the suffix -um (e.g. the villages Nieblum, Utersum, Wrixum etc).
The island is accessible by a car-ferry connecting the mainland port of Dageb?l and the town of Wyk.