Kattegat and Skagerrak.
The
Kattegat (
Danish, commonly used in English), or
Kattegatt (
Swedish) is a sea area bounded by the
Jutland peninsula and the
Straits islands of
Denmark on the west and south, and the provinces of
Scania,
Halland and
Bohuslän in
Sweden on the east. The
Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the
Oresund and the
Danish Straits. The Kattegat is a continuation of the
Skagerrak and may be seen as either a
bay of the
Baltic Sea, a bay of the
North Sea, or, in traditional Scandinavian usage, neither of these.
Geography
According to the definition established in a 1932 convention signed by Denmark,
Norway and Sweden (registered in the
League of Nations Treaty Series 199 - 1933), the northern boundary between Kattegat and Skagerrak is found at the northernmost point of
Skagen on Jutland and the southern boundary towards
Oresund is found at the tip of
Kullen Peninsula in Scania.
Waterways that drain into the Kattegat are the rivers of
Göta älv at
Gothenburg, together with the
Lagan,
Nissan,
Ätran and
Viskan from the province of
Halland on the Swedish side, and the river of
Gudenå from
Jutland, in Denmark.
The main islands of the Kattegat are
Samsø,
Læsø and
Anholt, where the latter two, due to their dry summer climate, are referred to as the Danish
desert belt.
A number of noteworthy coastal areas abut the Kattegat, including the
Kullaberg Nature Reserve in Scania, Sweden, which contains a number of
rare species and a scenic
rocky shore, the town of
Mölle, which has a picturesque harbour and views into the Kullaberg, and
Skagen at the northern tip of Denmark.
Currently, a proposed bridge from Jutland to
Zealand across the southern part of Kattegat is under political consideration in Denmark, linking the islands of Zealand and Samsø with continental Denmark.
Etymology
According to
Den Store Danske Encyklopædi and
Nudansk Ordbog, the name derives from the
Dutch words
Kat (cat) and
Gat (hole). It refers to late
medieval navigation jargon, when captains of the
Hanseatic trading fleets would compare the
Danish Straits to a hole so narrow that even a cat would have difficulty squeezing its way through on account of the many
reefs and shallow waters.
[Nudansk Ordbog (1993), 15th edition, 2nd reprint, Copenhagen: Politikens Forlag, entry Kattegat.] At one point, the passable waters were a mere 3.84 kilometers (2.38 miles) wide. The name of the
Copenhagen street
Kattesundet has the same etymological meaning, namely "narrow passage".
An archaic name for both the
Skagerrak and Kattegat was the
Norwegian Sea or
Jutland Sea (
Knýtlinga saga mentions the name
Jótlandshaf).
History
This was one of the first marine dead zones to be noted in the 1970s, when scientists began studying how intensive economic use affected the natural world.
