Baltic Sea
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Baltic Sea. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a shallow, irregular-shaped body of water, extending in a northeasterly direction from the North Sea . The name, it is thought, signifies white. The Baltic separates Germany and Russia from the lower extremity of the Scandinavian Peninsula . Denmark guards the entrance. In 1895 a ship canal was completed between the mouth of the Elbe near Hamburg and Kiel Bay on the Baltic. It lies entirely within German territory, and shortens the route from London to Baltic ports by several hundred miles. The waters of the Baltic are fresher than those of the ocean. Owing to the large number of rivers that empty into it, they contain only one-fifth as much salt as does seawater. They are also clearer, and freeze more readily. The arms and harbors of the Baltic are covered with ice during the winter season and the sea is closed to navigation. The coasts of the Baltic have long been famous for amber, still cast ashore. The open sea has a reputation for rough weather, but there are many safe ports. The tides rise and fall about a foot. With its arms, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia, the area of the Baltic is about twice that of our Great Lakes . The area drained into the Baltic is a fifth of all Europe. The fauna is that of a body of fresh water. Whales seldom venture in. The water is too fresh to sustain the life of oysters, but salmon, salmon-trout, and small herring are abundant. The fishing season is cut short by winter. At this season fishermen are afraid of being surrounded by floating ice and frozen in. See Copenhagen ; Stockholm ; St. Petersburg; Neva; Gotland ; Amber
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the great gulf or inland sea bordered by Denmark, Germany, Russia, and Sweden, and communicating with the Kattegat and North Sea by the Sound and the Great and Little Belts. Its length is from 850 to 900 miles; breadth, from 100 to 200; and area, including the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, 184,496 square miles, of which 12,753 are occupied by islands. Its shallowness and narrowness, its numerous islands and reefs, the shoal coasts of Prussia on the one side, and the rocky coast of Sweden on the other, make the navigation of the Baltic very dangerous. The group of the Aland Islands divides the S. part of the sea from the N. part or Gulf of Bothnia. The Gulf of Finland, branching off eastward into Russia, separates Finland from Esthonia. A third gulf is that of Riga or Livonia. The water of the Baltic is colder and clearer than that of the ocean, and contains only a fourth of the proportion of salt found in the Atlantic. Ice hinders the navigation of the Baltic from three to five months yearly. Upward of 250 rivers flow into this sea, which, wh through them and its lakes, drains rather less than one-fifth of all Europe, its drainage area being estimated as 717,000 square miles. The chief of these rivers are the Oder, Vistula, Niemen, Dwina, Narva, Neva; the waters of Lake Maeler, and those of Wetter and other lakes reach the sea through the river Motala. The principal islands are Zealand, Fünen, Bornholm, Samsöe, Laaland, Gottland, Oland, Hveen, the Aland Islands and Rügen. Timber, hides, tallow, and grain are the exports from the countries bordering on the Baltic.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 and Collier's 1921 accounts describe a sea bordered by just Denmark, Germany, Russia and Sweden; today nine independent states ring it, and with Finland joining NATO in 2023 and Sweden in 2024, only Russia's St Petersburg corner and the Kaliningrad exclave lie outside the alliance. The physical description still largely holds of of tide, brackish water, winter ice of though warming has shortened the ice season that once closed navigation for three to five months. What the old entries could not foresee is pollution: heavy nutrient runoff has given the Baltic some of the world's largest oxygen-starved dead zones on its deeper bottoms. Its floor now carries the Nord Stream gas pipelines, ruptured by explosions in September 2022, while the amber Aiton's noted is still washed ashore.
Written for this edition, 2026.