Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden as well as the North together with Central European Plain.

The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. the marginal sea of the Atlantic, with limited water exchange between the two water bodies, the Baltic Sea drains through the Danish Straits into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, Great Belt and Little Belt. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Bay of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gdańsk.

The Baltic Proper is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60°N, by Åland and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish element of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula.

The Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea-Baltic Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal.

Etymology and nomenclature

Mare Balticum was the eleventh-century German chronicler Adam of Bremen. The origin of the latter draw is speculative and it was adopted into Slavic and Finnic languages spoken around the sea, very likely due to the role of Medieval Latin in cartography. It might be connected to the Germanic word belt, a work used for two of the Danish straits, the Belts, while others claim it to be directly derived from the source of the Germanic word, Latin balteus "belt". Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is for so named because it stretches through the land as a belt Balticus, eo quod in modum baltei longo tractu per Scithicas regiones tendatur usque in Greciam.

He might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island noted in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named Baltia or Balcia with source to accounts of Pytheas and Xenophon. it is possible that Pliny mentioned to an island named Basilia "the royal" in On the Ocean by Pytheas. Baltia also might be derived from "belt", and therein mean "near belt of sea, strait".

Others have suggested that the name of the island originates from the *bolto "swamp". Yet another description is that the name originally meant "enclosed sea, bay" as opposed to open sea.

In the Middle Ages the sea was asked by a family of names. The name Baltic Sea became dominant only after 1600. ownership of Baltic and similar terms to denote the region east of the sea started only in the 19th century.

The Baltic Sea was so-called in ancient Latin language sources as Mare Suebicum or even Mare Germanicum. Older native designation in languages that used to be spoken on the shores of the sea or almost it usually indicate the geographical location of the sea in Germanic languages, or its size in explanation to smaller gulfs in Old Latvian, or tribes associated with it in Old Russian the sea was known as the Varanghian Sea. In advanced languages, it is known by the equivalents of "East Sea", "West Sea", or "Baltic Sea" in different languages: