The Danish straits are the straits connecting the Baltic Sea to the North Sea through the Kattegat and Skagerrak. Historically, the Danish straits were internal waterways of Denmark; however, following territorial losses, Øresund and Fehmarn Belt are now shared with Sweden and Germany, while the Great Belt and the Little Belt have remained Danish territorial waters. The Copenhagen Convention of 1857 made all the Danish straits open to commercial shipping. The straits have generally been regarded as an international waterway.
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👉 Danish straits in the context of Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain regions. It is the world's largest brackish water basin.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. It is a shelf sea and marginal sea of the Atlantic with limited water exchange between the two, making it an inland sea. 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 (divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea), the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gdańsk.
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Danish straits
- 👉 Danish straits in the context of Baltic Sea
- Danish straits in the context of Kattegat
- Danish straits in the context of Great Belt
- Danish straits in the context of Little Belt
- Danish straits in the context of Kiel Canal
- Danish straits in the context of Copenhagen Convention of 1857
Danish straits in the context of Kattegat
The Kattegat (/ˈkætəɡæt/; Danish: [ˈkʰætəkæt]; Swedish: Kattegatt [ˈkâtːɛˌɡat]) is a 30,000 km (12,000 sq mi) sea area bounded by the peninsula of Jutland in the west, the Danish straits islands of Denmark and the Baltic Sea to the south and the Swedish provinces of Bohuslän, Västergötland, Halland and Scania in Sweden in the east. The Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the Danish straits. The sea area is a continuation of the Skagerrak and may be seen as a bay of the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean, though it is not called a bay in traditional Scandinavian usage.
The Kattegat is rather shallow and can be dangerous to navigate due to many sandy, stony reefs and the tricky shifting currents. In modern times, artificial seabed channels have been dug, many reefs have been dredged either by sand pumping or boulder clearance, and a well-developed light signaling network has been installed to protect the heavy international traffic on this small sea.
Danish straits in the context of Great Belt
The Great Belt (Danish: Storebælt, pronounced [ˈstoːɐˌpelˀt]) is a strait between the major islands of Zealand (Sjælland) and Funen (Fyn) in Denmark. It is one of the three Danish Straits.
Effectively dividing Denmark in two, the Belt was served by the Great Belt ferries from the late 19th century until the islands were connected by the Great Belt Fixed Link in 1997–98.
Danish straits in the context of Little Belt
The Little Belt (Danish: Lillebælt, pronounced [ˈliləˌpelˀt]) is a strait between the island of Funen and the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark. It is one of the three Danish Straits that drain and connect the Baltic Sea to the Kattegat strait, which drains west to the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean.
Danish straits in the context of Kiel Canal
The Kiel Canal (German: Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, formerly Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal) is a 98-kilometer-long (61 mi) freshwater canal that links the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. It runs through the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, from Brunsbüttel, at the mouth of the Elbe, to Holtenau, on the Kiel Fjord. It was constructed between 1887 and 1895 and widened between 1907 and 1914. In addition to the two sea entrances, the canal is linked at Oldenbüttel to the navigable River Eider by the short Gieselau Canal.
The canal reduces the journey between the North and Baltic Seas by 460 km (290 mi) by allowing ships to bypass the Jutland peninsula and the Danish straits. It is one of the world's most frequented artificial waterways, with an annual average of 32,000 ships (90 daily), transporting approximately 100 million tonnes of goods.
Danish straits in the context of Copenhagen Convention of 1857
The Copenhagen Convention, which came into force on 14 March 1857, is a maritime treaty governing transit passage through the Danish straits.