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Information about Baltic Sea

For other uses, see Baltic (disambiguation).
Coordinates:
Enlarge picture
Phytoplankton bloom in the Baltic Proper, July 3 2001.


The Baltic Sea is located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and the Little Belt. The Kattegat continues through the Skagerrak into the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The Baltic Sea is artificially linked to the White Sea by the White Sea Canal and to the North Sea by the Kiel Canal.

Etymology

The first to name it the Baltic Sea ("Mare Balticum") was eleventh century German chronicler Adam of Bremen. The origin of the name is speculative. He may have based it on the mythical North European island Baltia, mentioned by Xenophon. Another possibility is that Adam of Bremen connected to the Germanic word belt, a name used for some of the Danish straits, while others claim it to be derived from Latin balteus (belt).[1] Still another proposed derivation from the Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, shining (note that 'baltas' means 'white' in today Lithuanian, while 'balts' means the same in modern Latvian language). The latter name could have influenced the Baltica myth because Baltic tribes lived on the shores of the Baltic Sea in ancient times and had contacts with the Mediterranean civilizations, being a well-known source of amber for ancient Greece and later for the Roman Empire. However, it is indisputable that the source of the name for the Baltic countries is the name of the Baltic Sea, not the other way around.

Name in other languages

The Baltic Sea is known by the equivalents of "East Sea", "West Sea", or "Baltic Sea" in different languages:

Geophysical data

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Baltic Sea in winter
The Baltic Sea is a brackish inland sea, alleged to be the largest body of brackish water in the world (other possibilities include the Black Sea). It occupies a basin formed by glacial erosion.

Dimensions

The Baltic sea is about 1600 km (1000 mi) long, an average of 193 km (120 mi) wide, and an average of 55 m (180 ft, 30 fathoms) deep. The maximum depth is 459 m (1506 ft), on the Swedish side of the center. The surface area is about 377,000 km² (145,522 sq mi) and the volume is about 21,000 km³ (5040 cubic miles). The periphery amounts to about 8000 km (4968 mi) of coastline. [1] These figures are somewhat variable because a number of different estimates have been made.

Sea ice

As a long-term average the Baltic Sea is ice covered for about 45% of its surface area at maximum annually. The ice-covered area during such a normal winter includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, Gulf of Riga and Vainameri in the Estonian archipelago. The Baltic Proper does not freeze during a normal winter, with the exception of sheltered bays and shallow lagoons such as the Courland Lagoon. The ice reaches its maximum extent in February or March; typical ice thickness in the northernmost areas in the Bothnian Bay is about 70 cm for landfast sea ice. The thickness decreases when moving south.

Freezing begins in the northern coast of Gulf of Bothnia typically in early November, reaching the open waters of Bay of Bothnia, the northern basin of the Gulf of Bothnia, in early January. The Bothnian Sea, the basin south of it, freezes on average in late February. The Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga freeze typically in late January.

The ice extent depends on whether the winter is mild, moderate or severe. Severe winters can ice the regions around Denmark and southern Sweden, and on rare cases the whole sea is frozen, such as in 1942. In 1987, some 96% of the Baltic Sea was iced, leaving only a small patch of open water to the west of Bornholm in the Baltic proper. Contrary to this, in milder winters the Bay of Bothnia and Gulf of Finland are the only larger areas that are ice covered, in addition to coastal fringes in more southerly locations such as the Gulf of Riga.

In spring, the Gulf of Finland and the Bothnian Sea normally thaw during late April, with some ice ridges persisting until May in the eastern Gulf of Finland. In the Bay of Bothnia ice usually stays until late May; by early June it is practically always gone.

During winter, fast ice which is attached to the shoreline, develops first, rendering the ports unusable without the services of icebreakers. Level ice, ice sludge, pancake ice or rafter ice form in the more open regions. The gleaming expanse of ice is similar to the Arctic, with wind-driven pack ice and ridges up to 15 m, and was noted by the ancients. Offshore of the landfast ice the ice remains very dynamic all year, because of its thickness it is relatively easily moved around by winds and therefore makes up large ridges and pile up against the landfast ice and shores.

The ice cover is the main habitat only for a few larger species. The largest of them are the seals that both feed and breed on the ice, although the sea ice also harbors several species of algae that live in the bottom and inside brine pockets in the ice.

Hydrography

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The Curonian Spit
The Baltic Sea flows out through the Danish straits; however, the flow is complex. A surface layer of brackish water discharges 940 km³ per year into the North Sea. Due to the difference in salinity, a sub-surface layer of more saline water moving in the opposite direction brings in 475 km³ per year. It mixes very slowly with the upper waters, resulting in a salinity gradient from top to bottom, with most of the salt water remaining below 40 to 70 m deep. The general circulation is counter-clockwise: northwards along its eastern boundary, and south along the western one (Alhonen 88).

The difference between the outflow and the inflow comes entirely from fresh water. More than 250 streams drain a basin of about 1.6 million km², contributing a volume of 660 km³ per year to the Baltic. They include the major rivers of north Europe, such as the Oder, the Vistula, the Neman, the Daugava and the Neva. Some of this water is polluted. Additional fresh water comes from the difference of precipitation less evaporation, which is positive.

An important source of salty water are infrequent inflows of North Sea water into the Baltic. Such inflows, important to the Baltic ecosystem because of the oxygen they transport into the Baltic deeps, used to happen on average every four to five years until the 1980s. In recent decades they have become less frequent. The latest three occurred in 1983, 1993 and 2003 suggesting a new inter-inflow period of about ten years.

The water level is generally far more dependent on the regional wind situation than on tidal effects. However, tidal currents occur in narrow passages in the western parts of the Baltic Sea.

The significant wave height is generally much lower than that of the North Sea. Violent and sudden storms often sweep the surface, due to large transient temperature differences and a long reach of wind. Seasonal winds also cause small changes in sea level, of the order of 0.5 m (Alhonen 88).

Salinity

The Baltic Sea's salinity is much lower than that of ocean water (which averages 3.5%, or 35 parts per thousand), as a result of abundant freshwater runoff from the surrounding land; indeed, runoff contributes roughly one-fortieth its total volume per year, as the volume of the basin is about 21,000 km³ and yearly runoff is about 500 km³. The open surface waters of the central basin have salinity of 6 to 8 ‰. At the semienclosed bays with major freshwater inflows, such as head of Finnish Gulf with Neva mouth and head of Bothnian gulf with close mouths of Lule, Tornio and Kemi, the salinity is considerably lower. Below 40 to 70 m, the salinity is between 10 and 15 ‰ in the open Baltic Sea, and more than this near Danish Straits.

The flow of fresh water into the sea from rivers and the flow of salty from the South builds up a gradient of salinity in the Baltic Sea. Near the Danish straits the salinity is close to that of the Kattegat, but still not fully oceanic, because the saltiest water that passes the straits is still already mixed with considerable amounts of outflow water.. The salinity steadily decreases towards North and East. At the northern part of the Gulf of Bothnia the water no longer tastes salty and many fresh water species live in the sea. The salinity gradient is paralleled by a temperature gradient. These two factors limit many species of animals and plants to a relatively narrow region of Baltic Sea.

The most saline water remains on the bottom, creating a barrier to the exchange of oxygen and nutrients, fostering totally different maritime environments.

Regional emergence

The land is still emerging isostatically from its subsident state, which was caused by the weight of the last glaciation. The phenomenon is known as post-glacial rebound. Consequently, the surface area and the depth of the sea are diminishing. The uplift is about eight millimetres per year on the Finnish coast of the northernmost Gulf of Bothnia. In the area, the former seabed is only gently sloped, leading to large areas of land being reclaimed in, geologically speaking, relatively short periods (decades and centuries).

Geographic data

Subdivisions

The northern part of the Baltic Sea is known as the Gulf of Bothnia, of which the northernmost part is the Bay of Bothnia or Bothnian Bay. The more rounded southern basin of the gulf is called Bothnian Sea and immediately to the south of it lies the Sea of Åland. The Gulf of Finland connects the Baltic Sea with St Petersburg. The Gulf of Riga lies between the Latvian capital city of Riga and the Estonian island of Saaremaa.

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 or Baltic proper. The Bornholm Basin is the area east of Bornholm, and the shallower Arkona Basin extends from Bornholm to the Danish isles of Falster and Zealand.

In the south, the Bay of Gdańsk lies east of the Hel peninsula on the Polish coast and west of Sambia in Kaliningrad Oblast. The Bay of Pomerania lies north of the islands of Usedom and Wolin, east of Rügen. 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 three Danish straits, the Great Belt, the Little Belt and The Sound (Øresund), connect the Baltic Sea with the Kattegat bay and Skagerrak strait in 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.

Land use

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Polish coast dunes.
The Baltic sea drainage basin is roughly four times the surface area of the sea itself. About 48% of the region is forested, with Sweden and Finland containing the majority of the forest, especially around the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.

About 20% of the land is used for agriculture and pasture, mainly in Poland and around the edge of the Baltic Proper, in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. About 17% of the basin is unused open land with another 8% of wetlands. Most of the latter are in the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.

The rest of the land is heavily populated.

Demographics

About 85 million people live in the Baltic drainage basin, 15 million within 10 km of the coast and 29 million within 50 km of the coast. Around 22 million live in population centers of over 250,000. 90% of these are concentrated in the 10 km band around the coast. Of the nations containing all or part of the basin, Poland includes 45% of the 85 million, Russia 12%, Sweden 10% and the others (see below) less than 6% each.

Geologic history

The Baltic Sea somewhat resembles a riverbed, with two tributaries, the Gulf of Finland and Gulf of Bothnia. Geological surveys show that before the Pleistocene instead of the Baltic Sea was a wide plain around a big river called the Eridanos. Several glaciation episodes during the Pleistocene scooped out the river bed into the sea basin. By the time of the last, or Eemian interglacial (MIS 5e), the Eemian sea was in place.

From that time the waters underwent a geologic history summarized under the names listed below. Many of the stages are named after marine animals (e.g. the Littorina mollusk) that are clear markers of changing water temperatures and salinity.

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A cliff Olando kepurė, Lithuania — a shore of the former Littorina Sea
The factors that determined the sea’s characteristics were the submergence or emergence of the region due to the weight of ice and subsequent isostatic readjustment, and the connecting channels it found 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.

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 Suebi eventually migrated south west to reside for a while in the Rhineland area of modern Germany, where their name survives in the historic region known as Swabia. 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 and Eystra salt appears in Sörla şáttr), 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 control over the sea with Slavic Pomeranians. The Vikings used the rivers of Russia for trade routes, finding their way eventually to the Black Sea and southern Russia. Lands next to the sea's eastern shore were among the last in Europe to be converted into Christianity in the Northern Crusades: Finland in the twelfth century by the Swedes, and what are now Estonia and Latvia in the early thirteenth century by the Danes and the Germans (Livonian Brothers of the Sword). The powerful German Teutonic Knights gained control over most of the southern and eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, while fighting the Poles, the Danes, the Swedes, the Russians of ancient Novgorod, and the Lithuanians (the last Europeans to convert to Christianity).

Later, 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 sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 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 ("Our Baltic Sea").

In the eighteenth 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, St. 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 eastern England and the Netherlands: their fleets needed the Baltic timber, tar, flax and hemp.

During the Crimean War, a joint British and French fleet attacked the Russian fortresses by bombarding Sveaborg, which guards Helsinki; Kronstadt, which guards St. Petersburg; and by destroying Bomarsund in the Åland Islands. After the unification of Germany in 1871, the whole southern coast became German. The First World War was partly fought in the Baltic Sea. After 1920, Poland returned to the Baltic Sea, and the Polish ports of Gdynia and Gdańsk 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 Wilhelm Gustloff remains the worst maritime disaster, killing (very roughly) 9,000 people. In 2005, a Russian group of scientists found over five thousand airplane wrecks, sunken warships, and other material mainly from the Second World War, lying at the bottom of the sea.

After 1945, the sea was a border between opposing military blocks: in the case of military conflict in Germany, in parallel with a Soviet offensive towards the Atlantic Ocean, communist Poland's fleet was prepared to invade the Danish isles.

Since May 2004, on the accession of the Baltic states and Poland, the Baltic Sea has been almost entirely surrounded by countries of the European Union (EU). The only remaining non-EU areas are the Russian metropolis of St. Petersburg and the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave.

Winter storms begin arriving in the region during October. These have caused numerous shipwrecks, such as the sinking of the ferry M/S Estonia en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden, in 1994, which claimed the lives of hundreds. Older, wood-based shipwrecks such as the Vasa tend to remain well-preserved, as the Baltic's cold and brackish water does not suit the shipworm.

Biology

Approximately 100,000 km² of the Baltic's seafloor (a quarter of its total area) is a variable dead zone. The more saline (and therefore denser) water remains on the bottom, isolating it from surface waters and the atmosphere. This leads to decreased oxygen concentrations within the zone. It is mainly bacteria that grow in it, digesting organic material and releasing hydrogen sulfide. Because of this large anaerobic zone, the seafloor ecology differs from that of the neighbouring Atlantic.

The low salinity of the Baltic sea has led to the evolution of many slightly divergent species, such as the Baltic Sea herring, which is a smaller variant of the Atlantic herring. The benthic fauna consists mainly of Monoporeia affinis, which is originally a freshwater species. The lack of tides has affected the marine species as compared with the Atlantic.

Economy

See also: Baltic Sea ferries


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Bridge into the sea in Palanga, the most popular sea resort in Lithuania
Construction of the Great Belt Bridge (1997) and Oresund Bridge (1999) over the international waterway of the Danish Straits has limited the Baltic Sea to medium-sized vessels . The Baltic Sea is the main trade route for export of Russian oil. Many of the neighboring countries are 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 northeastern Germany, are naturally very concerned.

Shipbuilding is practiced in many large shipyards around the Baltic: Gdańsk, Szczecin in Poland, HDW in Kiel, Germany, Karlskrona and Kockums in Malmö, Sweden, and Rauma, Turku, Helsinki in Finland, Rīga, Liepāja in Latvia and Klaipėda in Lithuania.

There are several cargo and passenger ferry operators on the Baltic Sea, such as Silja Line, Polferries, Viking Line, Tallink and Superfast Ferries.

The Helsinki Convention

1974 Convention

For the first time ever, all the sources of pollution around an entire sea were made subject to a single convention, signed in 1974 by the then seven Baltic coastal states. The 1974 Convention entered into force on 3 May 1980.

1992 Convention

In the light of political changes and developments in international environmental and maritime law, a new convention was signed in 1992 by all the states bordering on the Baltic Sea, and the European Community. After ratification the Convention entered into force on 17 January 2000. The Convention covers the whole of the Baltic Sea area, including inland waters and the water of the sea itself, as well as the sea-bed. Measures are also taken in the whole catchment area of the Baltic Sea to reduce land-based pollution. The Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, 1992, entered into force on 17 January 2000.

The governing body of the Convention is the Helsinki Commission[2], also known as HELCOM, or Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission. The present contracting parties are Denmark, Estonia, the European Community, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden.

The ratification instruments where deposited by the European Community, Germany, Latvia and Sweden in 1994, by Estonia and Finland in 1995, by Denmark in 1996, by Lithuania in 1997 and by Poland and Russia in November 1999.

Countries

Main article: Baltic Sea countries

Countries that border on the sea:



Countries that are in the drainage basin but do not border on the sea:

Islands and archipelagoes

Main article: List of islands in the Baltic Sea

Cities

The biggest coastal cities (by population):

Important ports (though not big cities):

See also

References

1. ^ (Swedish) Project Runeberg.
  • Fairbridge, Rhodes. The Encyclopedia of Oceanography. Pentti Alhonen, "Baltic Sea", pp. 87-91. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1966.

External links


 •  • [ e]
Countries of the Baltic region
Baltic states Estonia  Latvia  Lithuania
Other countries bordering the Baltic Sea Denmark  Finland
The template is . Please use instead.
This usage is deprecated. Please replace it with {{tdeprecated|Baltic Sea|Country}}.
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 Poland  Russia  Sweden
Baltic may refer to:

Places in Northern Europe
  • Baltic Sea
  • Baltic states, Baltic countries or Baltic republics: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia

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geographic coordinate system enables every location on the earth to be specified by the three coordinates of a spherical coordinate system aligned with the spin axis of the Earth.
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Northern Europe is a term for the northern part of Europe, though its precise boundaries are vague and defined variously. It is a term that groups the Nordic countries (which are present in all definitions):

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equator divides the planet into a Northern Hemisphere and a Southern Hemisphere, and has a latitude of 0. Latitude, usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter phi, , gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the equator.
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equator divides the planet into a Northern Hemisphere and a Southern Hemisphere, and has a latitude of 0. Longitude is the east-west geographic coordinate measurement most commonly utilized in cartography and global navigation.
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The Scandinavian Peninsula is a geographic region in northern Europe, consisting principally of the mainland territories of Norway and Sweden. The name Scandinavian is derived from Scania,[1][2][3][4]
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Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea,
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Motto
none
(Royal motto: Guds hjælp, Folkets kærlighed, Danmarks styrke
"The Help of God, the Love of the People, the Strength of Denmark" )
Anthem
Der er et yndigt land  (national)
Kong Christian
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The Kattegat (Danish), or Kattegatt (Swedish) is a sea area bounded by Jutland (Denmark) and Sweden. The Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the Oresund and the Danish Straits.
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Oresund or The Sound (Danish: Øresund, Swedish: Öresund) is the strait that separates the Danish island Zealand (Sjælland) from the south Swedish province Scania (Skåne).
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The Great Belt (Danish: Storebælt) is a strait between the main Danish islands of Zealand and Funen. Since 1997 the islands have been connected by the Great Belt Bridge.
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Little Belt (Danish: Lillebælt) is a strait between the Danish island of Funen and the Jutland Peninsula.

The belt is about 50km long and 800m to 28km wide, the maximum depth is approximately 75m. Numerous small islands are located within the belt.
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The Skagerrak strait runs between Norway and the southwest coast of Sweden and the Jutland peninsula of Denmark, connecting the North Sea and the Kattegat strait, which leads to the Baltic Sea.
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The North Sea is marginal, epeiric sea of the Atlantic Ocean on the European continental shelf between Norway and Denmark in the east, Scotland and England in the west, and Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in the south.
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Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres (41.1 million square miles), it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface.
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White Sea (Russian: Бе́лое мо́ре, Finnish: Vienanmeri) is an inlet of the Barents Sea on the northwest coast of Russia.
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White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal (Russian: Belomorsko-Baltiyskiy Kanal; BBK), is a ship canal that joins the White Sea and the Baltic Sea near St. Petersburg. Its original name was (until 1961) Belomorsko-Baltiyskiy Kanal imeni Stalina
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Kiel Canal (German: Nord-Ostsee-Kanal), until 1948 known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal, is a 98 kilometre (61 mile) long canal in the German Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein that links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at
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Adam of Bremen (also: Adam Bremensis) was one of the most important German medieval chroniclers. He lived and worked in the second half of the 11th century. He is most famous for his chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (
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Baltia is a legendary island in Roman mythology, said to be in northern Europe. It is mentioned by Xenophon according to "Natural History" by Pliny the Elder. The Baltic Sea may be named after it.
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Xenophon (In Greek Ξενοφῶν, ca. 431 – 355 BC), son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, was a soldier, mercenary and an admirer of Socrates.
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Latin}}} 
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Although the existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for a long time, there has been debate about many specific
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Lithuanian (lietuvių kalba) is the official state language of the Republic of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers.

History


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Latvian}}} 
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Official language of: Latvia, European Union
Regulated by: State Language Center
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ISO 639-1: lv
ISO 639-2: lav
ISO 639-3: lav Latvian (latviešu valoda
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Baltica is a Late Proterozoic-Early Palaeozoic continent that now includes the East European craton of northwestern Eurasia. Baltica was created as an entity not earlier than 1.8 Ga.
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The Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around and surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, which
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History of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled historically, and the territory now composing the modern state of Greece.
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