| The Baltic Sea is in northeastern Europe, bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of east and central
Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains
into the Kattegat and the North Sea
by way of the Öresund, the Great
Belt and the Little Belt. It is linked to the White Sea by the White Sea Canal and to the
North Sea by the Kiel Canal.
Name
The first one to name it the Baltic Sea was Adam of Bremen
and he seems to have based it on a large island, Baltia, mentioned by Xenophon and located in northern Europe. It is possibly connected to the Germanic belt, a name used for
some of the Danish straits, while others claim it to be derived from Latin balteus
(belt)[1] (http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/nfbb/0435.html). From this use, Baltic has been
applied to the Baltic countries. Another proposed derivation from
the Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, shining seems
speculative.
The Baltic Sea is known by the equivalents of "East Sea", "West Sea", or "Baltic Sea" in different languages:
Prehistory
The Baltic Sea is a very young sea, formed by the last ice age. As the ice receded
to north, the following stages of the Baltic formed:
As the ground rose after being pressed down by the ice, the Baltic Sea switched between being a sea and a lake, or something
in between, and it was variously connected to the North Sea-Atlantic either through the straits of Denmark or at what are now the large lakes of Sweden, and the White Sea-Arctic Sea. Many of the
stages are named after certain marine animals (like the Littorina mollusc) that are clear markers of changing water
temperatures and salinity.
The Baltic Sea somewhat resembles a riverbed, with two tributaries (the Gulf of Finland and Gulf of Bothnia). From geological surveys it has become
apparent that there indeed was a river in the area in the Pleistocene: the
Eridanos.
Due to the Post-glacial rebound, the ground is still
rising after having been released from the weight of the Weichsel
glaciation, especially around the Gulf of Bothnia: at places the ground is rising by almost one metre per century, which
means that the shore can gain dozens and someplace hundreds of meters in a human lifetime.
History
At the time of the Roman Empire, the Baltic Sea was known as the Mare
Suebicum or Mare Sarmaticum. Tacitus in
his AD 98 Agricola and Germania described the Mare Suebicum, named for the
Suebi tribe, during the spring months, as a brackish sea when the ice on the Baltic Sea broke apart and chunks
floated about. The Sarmatian tribes inhabited Eastern Europe and southern Russia.
Jordanes called it the Germanic Sea in his work the Getica.
Since the Viking age, the Scandinavians have called it "the Eastern Lake"
(Austmarr, "Eastern Sea", appears in the Heimskringla), but Saxo Grammaticus recorded in Gesta Danorum an older name Gandvik, "-vik" being
Old Norse for "bay", which implies that the Vikings correctly regarded it as an
inlet of the sea. (Another form of the name, "Grandvik", attested in at least one English translation of Gesta Danorum, is likely
to be a misspelling.)
In addition to fish the sea also provides amber,
especially from its southern shores. The bordering countries have traditionally provided lumber, wood tar, flax, hemp, and furs. Sweden had from early medieval times also a
flourishing mining industry, especially on iron
ore and silver. Poland had and still has
extensive salt mines. All this has provided for rich trading since the Roman times.
In the early Middle Ages, Vikings of Scandinavia fought for power over the sea
with Slavic Pomeranians. The Vikings used the rivers of Russia for trade routes, finding their way eventually all the way
to Black Sea and southern Russia.
Finland and the Baltic states were the last in Europe to be converted into Christianity in the Northern Crusades: the
former in the 12th century by the Swedes and the latter in the 13th century by the Germans. First the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and then the
powerful German Teutonic Knights held the Baltic countries and
fought with Danes and the Swedes, while the
foundations of Russia were being laid in Novgorod.
Later on, the strongest economic force in Northern Europe became the Hanseatic league, which used the Baltic Sea to establish trade routes between its member cities. In the
16th and early 17th centuries, Poland, Denmark and Sweden fought wars for Dominium Maris Baltici (Ruling
over the Baltic Sea). Eventually, it was the Swedish empire that virtually encompassed the Baltic Sea. In Sweden the sea was then
referred to as Mare Nostrum Balticum.
In the 18th century Russia and Prussia
became the leading powers over the sea. Russia's Peter the Great saw
the strategic importance of the Baltic and decided to found his new capital, Saint Petersburg at the mouth of the Neva river at the east end of
the Gulf of Finland. There was much trading not just within the
Baltic region but also with the North Sea region, especially the eastern England and
the Netherlands: their fleets needed the Baltic timber, tar, flax and
hemp.
During the Crimean War a joint fleet of Great Britain and France attacked Russian fortresses by
bombarding Sveaborg that guards Helsinki and Kronstadt that guards Saint Petersburg and destroying Bomarsund in the Åland Islands. After the unification
of Germany in 1871, the whole southern coast
became German. The First World War was fought also on the Baltic Sea. After
1920 Poland returned to the Baltic Sea, and
Polish ports of Gdynia and Gdansk became
leading ports of the Baltic.
During the Second World War Germany reclaimed all of the southern shore and much of the
eastern by occupying Poland and the Baltic states. In 1945 the Baltic Sea became a mass
grave for drowned people on torpedoed refugee ships. As of 2004, the sinking of the troopship Wilhelm Gustloff
remains the worst maritime
disaster of all time, killing (very roughly) 9,000 people.
After 1945 the sea was a border between conflicted military blocks: in case of military
conflict in Germany, in parallel with a Soviet offensive towards the Atlantic Ocean, communist Poland's fleet was prepared to invade Danish isles.
In May 2004, the Baltic Sea became almost completely a European Union internal sea when the Baltic
states and Poland became parts of the European Union, leaving only the Russian
metropolis of Saint
Petersburg and the enclave of Kaliningrad as non-EU areas.
The Baltic Sea starts to get very rough with the October storms. These winter storms have been the cause of many shipwrecks,
like for example the Estonia in 1994.
But thanks to the cold brackish water where the shipworm cannot survive, the sea is
a time capsule for centuries-old shipwrecks. Perhaps the most famous one is the Wasa.
Subdivisions
The northern part of the Baltic Sea is known as the Gulf of
Bothnia out of which the northernmost part is referred to as the Bay of Bothnia. Immediately to the south of it lies the Sea of Åland. The Gulf of Finland connects the Baltic Sea with St. Petersburg. The Northern Baltic Sea lies between the Stockholm area,
southwestern Finland, and Estonia. The Western and Eastern Gotland Basins form the major parts of the Central Baltic Sea. The
Gulf of Riga lies between Riga and
Saaremaa. Bay of Gdansk
lies east of the Hel peninsula on the Polish coast and west of Sambia in Kaliningrad Oblast.
Bay of Pomerania lies north of the islands of Usedom and Wolin, east of Rügen. Bornholm
Basin is the area east of Bornholm and Arkona Basin extends from Bornholm to the
Danish isles of Falster and Zealand.
Between Falster and the German coast lie the Bay of Mecklenburg
and Bay of Lübeck. The westernmost part of the Baltic Sea is the Bay of Kiel. The Sound, the Belts, and
the Kattegat connect the Baltic Sea with the Skagerrak and the North Sea. The confluence of these two seas at
Skagen on the northern tip of Denmark is a
visual spectacle visited by many tourists each year.
Biology
The Baltic Sea is very shallow (average 57 meters, max. 459 meters), and because the straits of Denmark are quite narrow, the
waters of the Baltic are not regularly exchanged with the cold waters of the Atlantic. The flow of the rivers into the Baltic is
quite high, however, and as a result the salinity of water in the Baltic Sea is
somewhere between freshwater and seawater, known as brackish water. The low salinity has led to many
slightly divergent species like the Baltic Sea herring that is a smaller variant of
the Atlantic herring. The Baltic Sea has practically no tides, which also has affected the marine species as compared with the Atlantic.
The Baltic Sea is surrounded by countries practicing a lot of agriculture, which leads into a lot of fertilizers getting into
the sea (also, the city of Saint Petersburg still doesn't process
much of its waste water), and therefore every summer a lot of algae blooming takes
place.
Economy
In 1999 the huge bridge over the Sound limited the Baltic Sea to the middle-sized vessels (see: Oresund Bridge). In meantime, the Baltic Sea is the main trade route for export
of Russian oil. Many of the neighboring countries are rather concerned about this, since a major oil leak would be disastrous in
the Baltic given the slow exchange of water, and the many unique species. The tourism industries, especially in economies
dependent on tourism like for example in northeastern Germany, are naturally very concerned.
Shipbuilding is practiced in many large shipyards around the Baltic: Gdansk in
Poland, Kiel in Germany, Karlskrona and
Kockum in Sweden, and Rauma, Turku, and Helsinki in Finland.
Countries
Main article: Baltic Sea countries
Islands and Archipelagoes
Main article: List of islands
in the Baltic Sea
Cities
The biggest coastal cities:
- Saint Petersburg (Russia) 4,700,000
- Stockholm (Sweden) 743,703 (metropolitan area 1,823,210)
- Tricity (Poland) (metropolitan area 1,035,000) including
- Helsinki (Finland) 559,716 (metropolitan area 980,000)
- Riga (Latvia) 760,000
- Szczecin (Poland) 413,600
- Tallinn (Estonia) 401,774
- Kaliningrad (Russia) 400,000
- Malmö (Sweden) 259,579
- Kiel (Germany) 250,000
- Lübeck (Germany) 216,100
- Rostock (Germany) 212,700
- Klaipeda (Lithuania) 194,400
- Turku (Finland) 175,000
Important ports (though not being big cities):
External links
Tourism links
- Zrot : Official Tourism Site Western Pomerania
(PL) (http://www.zrot.pl) (Polish, English, German)
- Zart : Polish Tourism Site Western
Pomerania (PL) (http://www.zart.com.pl) (Polish, English, German)
- Official German Tourism Site :
Regional Tourist Board Vorpommern (D) (http://www.vorpommern.de) (English,
German, Swedish, Polish)
- Ost|See|Land - Overview: German Polish-
Tourism site (D) (http://www.ostseeland.de) (English, German, Swedish,
Polish)
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