In two days I’ll be leaving for Scandinavia. Having known for at least three years that the Deutschland did an annual sailing to Spitsbergen, and having carefully planned so many details of this trip starting a year ago, I keep on getting the feeling: didn’t I do this trip already? The fact that I’m also planning a number of other trips over the next three years doesn’t alleviate my disorientation.

I’ve been wanting to send one more letter out before leaving, covering a number of items, mostly pertaining to this trip, and I’m going to challenge the worthy reader to figure out something Scandinavian.

There is an extremely famous “something” from Scandinavia whose local name is “Skrik” (I as in SKI). Everyone is familiar with it, and when you figure it out, you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, of course”. Så, can you figure out what Skrik is?

Two Divas   Before moving on to discussing Scandinavia some more, I have another New York story, actually a pair of stories. This might be called an “only in New York” experience, but that isn’t quite accurate. It could have happened in other world cities perhaps, but not many. It involves two dinners with music, one at Café Sabarsky and one at Chez Joséphine.

The first story involves Marta Eggerth (pronounced Eggert). As a Germanist I always want to kick myself when I come across something I feel I should have known before, and this was one of them. I’ve discussed Café Sabarsky, located in the art museum known as the Neue Galerie (NOI-uh ga-le-REE) on Fifth and 86th, specializing in Austrian and German art. I’ve described going there for a caberet evening late last year, based on periodic mailings of various upcoming performances. Well a special letter came out suddenly announcing a very special pair of concerts by (the apparently rather elderly) Marta Eggerth in mid-May, and they were sure that everyone would want to sign up immediately. Well, I was non-plussed. I’d never heard of Marta Eggerth. Off to the internet.

Marta Eggerth comes from the Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich era of European entertainment. She is Hungarian by birth, made only one film in Hungarian, went to Vienna with her mother, and became an operetta star. Even Franz Lehár wrote for her. As a matter of fact, his Die lustige Witwe/The Merry Widow became her signature role. By 1930 she was a movie star filming in Berlin, where she met and married the Polish singer Jan Kiepura, and they were the reigning film couple of the day in Europe. By 1938 they felt it wise to emigrate, first to Paris, then to New York. She went to Hollywood and made two films with Judy Garland, “For Me and My Gal” in 1942, also with Gene Kelly, and “Presenting Lily Mars” in 1943. Back in New York, she starred in a Broadway production of The Merry Widow from 1944 to 1946. She made a few more films into the Fifties, and then retired. She lives in Rye, New York, which is the next town south of Purchase, where Beverly and I had built our house and lived for eleven years. On the internet I found that she and her late husband have been recently honored in Budapest, Poland, and at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. Quite a résumé.

It all sounded intriguing, and I reserved a table for her second performance at Café Sabarsky. As I munched on my Rhabarber-Strudel (rhubarb strudel) mit Schlag (with unsweetened whipped cream), I found that the people I chatted with at the next table, all local Upper East Siders not necessarily familiar with German and Austrian culture, had all been well familiar with her work, to my consternation. The letter had said she was now over 90; from the internet I calculated she turned 94 in April. How good could her voice be? Even with a decent voice, would she be a crotchety old lady?

At nine the lights dimmed on a packed room, and, from the lobby outside the Café, her pianist led her in on his arm, a petite white-haired lady in a black evening gown, whose height the years had somewhat foreshortened.

To cut to the chase, she didn’t need to be escorted in. She probably could have carried the pianist in over her shoulder. Her voice over an hour and ten minutes was excellent, but most captivating was her personality. She simply charmed the room with her stories in between the songs. She started by declaring how wonderful it was to perfrom in such an intimate setting instead of a large theater, which won everyone over.

And the stories. When she and her mother arrived in Vienna in the late twenties, she did get an understudy job for an operetta. Then in true show business style à la the musical “42nd Street”, the lead got sick and she was forced to go on that same day, without any proper rehearsal, and was a great success. In Berlin she talked about knowing Lotte Lenya. She met Billy Wilder and was invited up to his apartment. She accepted readily, and told him she and her mother would be there that evening. He looked at her and said (in the only German phrase she used all evening other than in songs) “Muss das sein?” (“Does it have to be that way?”), to which she replied “Ja, das muss sein”, and the invitation was withdrawn, to the delight of the listening audience.

On arrival in New York, she talked about discussing music with Richard Rogers. Jan Kiepura became a singer at the Metropolitan Opera, and Marta decided she wanted to give a concert of Schubert songs. She was told by producers that was not a good idea, since “no one knew Schubert in New York”. Some time later, when she was to give a theater performance, she pointed out the irony of the fact that she was to perform in the Schubert Theater.

She said she never liked Hollywood, but got to like Judy Garland very well. She told the story of when Garland came up to her, said she had passed Marta’s house the night before, and was surprised to see the lights out. “What time was it?--Three in the morning.--I was sleeping!” Knowing Judy Garland’s many problems, her response was poignant: “You can sleep?”

She told about one time she was speaking to her agent and said she wanted to retire. Why? She wanted to have children, and how long did he think she’d be willing to wait—and here she fixed the audience with her eye, as she paused—until she was ninety-four?

She had the audience in the palm of her hand. She finished the evening explaining that with shows like The Merry Widow, it was customary in her day to have a German, English, French, and Italian version ready, depending on what country they were touring in at the moment. Then, to illustrate, she sang her signature song from her signature operetta, Vilja from The Merry Widow, alternating between the four languages. What a pleasant evening.

She went out to a long standing ovation. When it was time to leave, I wondered if she’d have a receiving line out in the lobby. Surpringly, there weren’t too many people around her. There was a time when I’d bring Beverly up to a famous person and ask if they would shake her hand, but that time is gone. Instead, fortified by a bottle of Grüner Veltliner with dinner, I went up and we had a nice chat. We talked about German studies, Beverly, about our having lived in Purchase to her living in Rye, at which point she reached around me and gave me a hug. And of course, both at the beginning and end of our conversation, I kissed her hand nach Wiener Art/à la viennoise/Viennese style. I’m sure no one else did so that evening, but this is one Germanist that doesn’t let old Mitteleuropa customs go ignored.

The other diva I referred to in the introduction is of the very same era, the Twenties and Thirties, and we’ve all heard of her: the late Josephine Baker. She was an American from Saint Louis, who went to Paris and became a show business sensation on stage, screen, and recordings, eventually becoming a French citizen by marriage. The French called her “La Baker”, and I know you’re mispronouncing that phrase, since the French always pronounced her name ba-KAIR. She had a restaurant in Montmartre called Chez Joséphine Baker. She was made Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur for her work in the French Resistance in WW2. She was a civil rights activist, attacking segregation in the US, and eventually gave a well-received concert in Carnegie Hall. She famously adopted twelve children of all races, calling them her “Rainbow Tribe”. In 1975 she premiered a comeback show in Paris performing her songs, which got some of the best reviews of her career. Princess Grace and Sophia Loren were in the audience. After a party in her honor, she died in her sleep of a ceberal hemorrhage. Her funeral was at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, and she was the first American woman to receive French military honors at her funeral, including a 21-gun salute.

So what does this to have to do with New York? I had heard years ago that one of her adopted children Jean-Claude Baker, had opened a restaurant o 42nd Street in her honor, called Chez Joséphine. I had long wanted to go there. I remember calling a couple of years ago to see if the place was wheelchair accessible for Beverly. Although it was, we never went. Now with my new philosophy of Carpe diem!, I went for a pre-theater dinner there last week. It turns out that 2006 marks not only 100 years since Josephine Baker was born, but also 20 years since the opening of the restaurant.

Like many New York restaurants, it’s located in a townhouse, so it’s narrow, but long. The style is wonderfully garish, with what looks like red velvet on the walls as well as blue with fleurs-de-lis. A pianist plays in the center, the food is great, and the couple at the next table I spoke to says they’ve been coming there for years and bring all their friends. And I had a chat with Jean-Claude Baker.

Actually, that wasn’t unique, since he comes around to all the tables, but we chatted just a bit extra. He professes to not like food particularly, but to liking people, which shows. I told him I had wanted to get Beverly there but it never worked out, and he said some nice things. I asked him about his mother, and said it was wonderful the way she went. She had just made a comeback—what better for a person in show business—and went in her sleep. He went and got two postcards for me, one of the original Chez Joséphine Baker in Montmartre, and another showing her in a French ad for hair pomade. He also pointed out how wild it was to establish a restaurant in this location 20 years ago, which requires explanation.

People associate 42nd Street with show business, and that’s not entirely accurate. Only one block is so associated, not far from Times Square. 42nd Street starts at the East River, bordering the United Nations at First Avenue. By Park Avenue (equal to Fourth Avenue) it passes Grand Central Station. As it crosses Fifth Avenue there is the imposing New York Public Library followed by Bryant Park. (Grand Central, the Library, and the Park have all been beautifully restored in recent years.) It is only between Seventh and Eighth Avenues that 42nd Street is the show biz center of fame, but it’s had sinking and rising fortunes. The first half of the 20th Century was the heydey of this block, with theater after theater lining both sides, the most famous being the New Amsterdam Theater, where the Ziegfield Follies were held. By mid-century decline had set in to this block so bad that all the theaters had become either grind movie houses, or porno houses. At the worst point, it was reported that the roof had collapsed in the disused New Amsterdam Theater and rainwater had caused mold to grow in the auditorium. Only with the comeback of Times Square did this famous block have a renaissance. Disney restored the New Amsterdam, and the Lion King has been playing there ever since. Other theaters have also been returned to theatrical use, and Madame Toussaud’s Waxworks from London is now on that block.

Beyond this block from Seventh to Eighth, all the way to the Hudson waterfront at Twelfth, had been Siberia when Jean-Claude opened Chez Joséphine at the location it’s still at, between Ninth and Tenth. You could imagine how it was to get to that location in the early years. But when I visited, it was a pleasant walk, and several new off-Broadway theaters have now opened further down that block, which is now called Theater Row. This is the sort of thing Jean-Claude and I discussed that evening at Chez Joséphine.

Could the Eggerth-Baker events have taken place other than in New York? Possibly, but it’s still quite unique.

Beverly's Train   When I first discussed the Scandinavian trip, I willfully used without further explanation the phrase “Beverly’s train”. I now want to explain why that’s what I like to call the X2000, the Swedish high-speed tilting train. And therein, not surprisingly, lies another tale.

Every spring for some 32 years, Beverly and I would attend without fail the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Modern Languages. Once it was in Boston and once in Baltimore, but otherwise it varied between the New York Hilton and the Washington Hilton. I was a good time to catch up, see old friends, learn something new, and just get away for a while. It was always on a Friday and Saturday, which meant getting a Conference Day from school Friday and using our own Saturday.

My mind’s eye (that liar) tells me that this story happened in one of the last years we both were teaching, but that would, indeed, be a lie as it turns out. Online research (bless it) on the X2000 shows the year of this story has to be 1993, when Beverly was retired two years, and me one. Beverly’s travel diary then narrows it down: this event took place on May 5, 1993. In retrospect, then, I do recall that we did attend the Northeast for one additional year into our retirement.

The rail news that year interested both of us. Sweden was trying to interest Amtrak in it’s new X2000 high-speed tilt trains, and had sent one trainset, if not two, for practice use on American routes for a period of three months. Of course the tracks were not yet ready for high-speed use at 150 mph, and the train would go at conventional speeds, and not even use the tilt-into-the-curve technology. It was just a demonstration.

We were going to go by Metroliner roundtrip to the Northeast in Washington, and I was glad to work it out that at least on the trip down, we’d be able to ride the X2000, then return on the Metroliner.

Beverly wrote in her travel diary that day among other things: “We ... took the Swedish X2000 tilt train to Washington”. But I remember it being a lot more dramatic than that.

I remember rushing over to Penn Station, taking the escalator down to the proper platform, and hopping onto the X2000, which wouldn’t be leaving for another 10-15 minutes. We sat down face-to-face at a table for two and settled in. Then the strangest thing happened.

I looked across the table to Beverly and her face screwed up, as though she was about to burst into tears. I was shocked, and asked what the matter was. She quietly wailed, slowly and deliberately, full of emotion: “This ... train ... is ... SWEDISH!!!”

I do hope you don’t see that as a “cute” reaction on her part to her heritage. There was nothing cute about it. We were both pleased to be on a special train, and were both pleased that it was Swedish, but that was no normal reaction. I took both her hands, and it passed in a moment. She was all smiles in seconds.

I couldn’t believe what had just happened in the last thirty seconds. The normal thing is to just dismiss it as a fluke and get set to enjoy our weekend trip to Washington, and yes, on the X2000. Only when Beverly was diagnosed with Pick’s Disease in June, 1995 did I think back on this early emotional event, and recognize it for what it apparently was, an early indication of the beginning of the end. And now I know the exact date, May 5, 1993.

Amtrak never acquired the X2000 technology, but later developed, for better or for worse, the Acela high-speed technology now used between Boston, New York, and Washington. From what I read, the X2000 went on to revive the Swedish railroads, which were in decline. Today there are three main routes from Stockholm (in the center of the east coast), one north, one west to Sweden’s second city Göteborg (Gothenburg), and one southwest to Sweden’s third city, Malmö. There are then shuttles going from Malmö to Denmark via the bridge-tunnel across the Öresund to Copenhagen. Maybe three times a day there are through trains from Copenhagen (via Malmö) to Stockholm.

Our last visit to Scandinavia had been in 1973, when we drove, and took no trains, so Beverly never did get to ride the X2000 in Sweden. I do think she would have enjoyed it. Therefore, it is for more than the pleasure of a fast rail trip that I worked it out carefully that I would be riding Beverly’s Train twice this July, first from Copenhagen across the Öresund via Malmö to Stockholm, and then, after the trip on the Göta Canal from Stockholm to Göteborg, back to Stockholm.

In addition, following my Carpe diem! mantra, this September I’ll be taking the Acela between Boston and Washington to see how it is. When the Acela stops in Penn Station enroute, I will then be able to recall the X2000 trip there.

As a footnote to the story on Beverly’s Train, I also just read that in 2007 the X2000’s in Sweden are getting old enough that they are up for refurbishing, and each trainset will be taken out of service, one at a time, to do so. It’s just another indication of the passage of time between the incident at Penn Station and now.

Bananer   It is time to talk more about the Scandinavian languages. A good lead in is to tell about bananer. It illustrates not only the languages, but also shows what “language people” go nuts about.

This took place just before Christmas 1961. We had been studing in Mainz, and were going up to Sweden for Christmas, where we ended up getting engaged. As students, money was very tight, so we took the overnight train from Mainz north via Hamburg, then diagonally northeast via the train ferry over the Fehmarn Belt to Copenhagen. We sat up in our seats overnight. If this had been in a plane, nowadays you’d call it the redeye.

We got into a chilly Copenhagen early in the morning on a sunny winter’s day, and settled into a hotel room to rest. After a while I looked out the window, and downstairs and across the street was apparently a fruit-and-vegetable market, and in the window was a sign giving the price of bananer.

To possibly comprehend the reaction of a language nut, we have to talk about plurals. Of the Germanic languages, English is the one that has adopted en masse the French (and Spanish, and Portuguese) S plural. There is only a handful of words, which we call—I find it humorous—“irregular plurals”, which are in reality the remnant in English of Germanic plurals. For instance, English has a couple of N plurals in children and oxen (at one time we also talked about treen, pronounced tree-en). N plurals appear in Scandinavian, but are most common in Dutch and German, as in German Frauen, Autobahnen, and, yes, Bananen. And then we come to the Germanic R plurals. The only remnant of an R plural in English is in children, which is an incredible word, since it has two plural endings at the same time, first an R and then an N. In German, R plurals are not hugely common, but also not rare: Mann becomes Männer and Land becomes Länder.

But, as I eventually learned, R plurals thrive in Scandinavian, either as –or, -ar, or -er. Take ros, fru, banan. Roses are rosor, women are fruar, and bananas are—bananer.

Those examples are in Swedish, but Danish works pretty much the same. So as I looked out and saw that Danish sign talking about bananer, my reaction, this being my first time in Scandinavia, and being enthralled by this burst of R plurals was to say: We have to learn Danish!

You will smile when you ponder how my Miss Sweden took that statement, since I always do. She never wagged her finger, but her tone had a definite finger-wagging quality. What do I mean, learn Danish? If we learn anything Scandinavian, it’ll be Swedish! And just about a decade later, that’s just what we did, learning it at home and then taking that three-week summer course at Göteborgs Universitet in 1973.

Of course, she was right, and for many reasons. Obviously her heritage and all her Swedish relatives was a factor, also the fact she had already delved into Swedish on her earlier visit. But even on a neutral basis, if one is interested in Scandinavian, unless one has a specific reason to learn Danish or Norwegian (business, friends, family), Swedish should be the logical choice. Note the following.

There are 5.2 million Danes, 4.4 million Norwegians, but 8.8 million Swedes. That’s close to as many Swedes as the other two combined.

Copenhagen’s population is 470K, Oslo’s is 730K, but Stockholm, at 1,750K, is almost half again larger than the two others combined, and is considered the de facto capital of Scandinavia.

A few quirks of geography: Denmark is small, but flat, and has 70% of its land cultivated. Norway is so very mountainous (and don’t forget all those fjords), so that it has only 4% of its land under cultivation. The figure for Sweden is 10%, keeping in mind that 55% of Sweden is forest, and ¾ of the population lives in the southern half of the country. The population density reflects these facts: flat and small Denmark has 96 people per square kilometer, mountainous Norway a mere 13, and forested Sweden 19.

A few comments on words. Above I said we attended Göteborgs Universitet. That last E is, as always, as in cafE. You’ll recall from the Universität Mainz that the German word is the same, and is pronounced the same, but maintains the Ä spelling.

Sweden’s second city is actually caled Gothenburg in English, but I prefer to stick to the original name Göteborg. Please note that both G’s in that name are Y’s. It’s pronounced yö-tuh-BORY (that last part is just one single syllable). And the canal that leads up to it, the Göta Kanal, is YÖ-ta.

Just a bit about possives. The “of” possessive used so extensively in English, comes from the Italic languages, such as “the color of the car”. One could also say “the car’s color”, but the S possessive in English, which is purely the Germanic possessive, tends to be used more with people: my father’s house; Karin’s roses.

The Scandinavian languages take the Germanic S possessive seriously (only English spells it with an apostrophe). It occurs in forms one expects, such as: min fars hus; Karins rosor. Then one is surprised that the University of Gothenburg comes out Göteborgs Universitet. The Bank of Norway is Norges Bank. I find most unusual that something like the City of Stockholm is Stockholms Stad.

While we are talking names we should clarify that Stockholm and Oslo (OOssloo) are what you expect, but Copenhagen in Danish is København (in Swedish it’s Köpenhamn). The countries are Danmark, Norge, Sverige, and be careful of those G’s, which, again are Y’s: NOR-yeh, SVER-i-yeh.

I’ve got to tell a story on Beverly and me that proves that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The Swedish word for eye is öga (like Auge in German). It not only has an N plural, it’s slightly irregular: eyes are ögon. In 1973 we were taking those weekend drives out of Göteborg and driving through all sorts of small towns, and we started noticing shops with signs saying “Glasögon”. When we saw the first one we thought how odd to have come across what apparently was a medical supply house selling glass eyes. Then we saw “Glasögon” signs again and again. Maybe there was a horrible plague of eye disorders going around? Curiosity got the better of us and we walked up to a shop saying “Glasögon” and saw what they were selling: eyeglasses.

It’s funny about word order. Sometimes it makes little difference, yet there is a huge difference between chocolate milk and milk chocolate. The two languages combine “eye” and “glass” (or “glas” and “öga”) in opposite ways to say the same thing. It occurs to me that in English a put-down for someone wearing glasses is to call him or her a “four-eyes”, which clearly implies that the two pieces of glass count in that expression as two extra eyes. So isn’t that what glasögon is saying, that you’re wearing two “glass” eyes?

Out of curiosity I looked up how you actually do talk about a glass eye (artifical eye) in Swedish, and it turns out to be emalj-öga. Those readers who know French émail (or German Emaille) will understand that emalj is the Swedish rendering of that French word (as French famille is Swedish familj). As to why you would call an artificial eye an enamel eye—I don’t even want to begin to go there.

We have been discussing different languages and sometimes discussing “Scandinavian”. This should be clarified. Sometimes politics enters into the classification of languages. A good example is to compare the Italian situation with the Scandinavian situation. Compare someone in Northern Italy speaking, say, the Venetian dialect, and someone in Southern Italy speaking, say, the Sicilian dialect. They will not understand each other, yet, because Italy is a single country, these very different dialects are still considered varieties of Italian.

The opposite is true in Scandinavia. Most Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians traveling in each other’s countries, will certainly understand the written versions of each others’ languages—with my minimal Swedish, even I can--, and most likely, most of what people say as well, yet in contrast with the Italian situation, we call the Scandinavian languages different because they are in different countries. Actually, frequently Scandinavians refer to the three countries as “Norden”, The North, and had simplified border crossing formalities, at least for locals, long before that became fashionable elsewhere.

You need to see an example of this. Some time ago, I found at random a Scandinavian antequarian bookseller’s website. By clicking on a flag, you could change the language it was in. For purposes of illustration, I took English, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. I didn’t even have to leave the home page for this illustrative text. It happened to be a Monday.

....English: Updated every Monday, most recently today, with over 8000 new titles.
Swedish: Uppdateras varje måndag, senast i dag, med över 8000 nya titlar.
.....Danish: Opdateres hver mandag, sidst i dag, met mere end 8000 nye titler.
Norwegian: Oppdateres hver mandag, sist i dag, med mer enn 8000 nye titler.

The first thing to notice is the similarity between Germanic languages in general, but of course, the point here is really the similarity of the three “different” Scandinavian languages. As you note the similarities, let me point out a few, such as “up” at the beginning and, at the end, notice the R plurals, either –AR or -ER. The words for “every” all have a -ver- (or –var-) root, including the English. met/med is like German mit. Then look carefully and you’ll see why I’d say that different people worked on these translations. Can you tell why? Before the number 8000, the Swedish translator decided to say, as the English one did, “over”, while the other two said instead “more than”. It’s all the same in the end, yet a single translator throughout would have been consistent, and the three language samples would have been just that much more similar to each other.

One last thing on that same home page. Near the search area it said:

.....English: Find the book here.
...Swedish: Hitta boken här.
.....Danish: Find bogen her.
Norwegian: Finn boken her.

This illustrates that, even with huge consistency between these languages, every once in a while, there will be an anomaly. The Swedish word to find is “hitta”, which must have entered Swedish from another source, and is just not like the other words.

I spot one other thing that may be of interest. It shows how Danish maintains old spellings (like English does), and Norwegian updates them. Look at the –MB spellings in English words like lamb, dumb, comb. At one time, those words must have really ended in –MB, but then they lost the B. However the spelling never caught up to reality, and the B, which corresponds to nothing, is still written.

It is similar with Danish and Norwegian, but with –ND instead. That D is not there. Look at the words for “than” in the first group above. Danish has end, Norwegian enn. They are both pronounced as Norwegian spells it, but Danish holds onto the old spelling. Another example is the words for “find” in the second group, Danish find, Norwegian finn, but don’t be surprised that both are pronounced like Norwegian spells it. That pesky Danish D shows up in another one you often see when looking at maps or walking around cities. A city square, Platz in German, place in French, is plads in Danish and plass in Norwegian. Both are pronounced as Norwegian spells it, and both imitate the pronunciation of the French word.

The Baltic   There are actually three objectives to the upcoming trip, and to discussions in this space about it. I’ve said I want to go as far north as reasonably possible for a traveler, barring scientific expeditions. I want to revisit Scandinavia (and Finland, and a piece of northern Germany while I’m at it), all tied in to discussions of Indo-European languages in general and Germanic languages in particular. But thirdly, an objective is to revisit the beautiful Baltic Sea and to discuss in general the waterways of Northern Europe, which to a large (although clearly not total) extent involve countries where Germanic languages are spoken.

We’ve talked about the Caribbean Sea (Reflections 2004 Series 4) when Beverly and I were crossing it on the Caronia headed for the Panama Canal, how the movement of plates caused Central America to rise from the sea, simultaneously connecting North and South America and blocking natural access to the Caribbean from the west, and also how the islands in the Eastern Caribbean are volcanic in origin, forming the backwards-C arc of those many islands. Access to the Caribbean from the Atlantic is simple, just sail between whatever islands you can.

We’ve mentioned about the formation of the Mediterranean (Reflections 2005 Series 14) with the Atlantic cataclysmically pouring in over centuries, filling it all across as far as Lebanon and Israel, and in addition, via Greece and Turkey to the Black Sea, even to the Sea of Azov to the east of the Crimea. Access to the Mediterranean is a straight shoot through the Strait of Gibraltar. I have never sailed the Black Sea, but we have sailed Venice-Middle East-Marseille, and also Genoa by freighter through the Strait to North America.

Other than sailing the Bay of Biscay, which is one of the things I am scheduling for 2007, I find it of interest to see how Northern Europe is accessible by water.

North of Gibraltar, there are essentially two routes to Europe, since the British Isles form a natural barrier. You either go west of them, or east. The western route squeezes you in between Scotland and Iceland, and you arrive in the Norwegian Sea (Norskehavet; hav=sea, -et is the other way to say “the”). All languages seem to uniformly call it the equivalent of the Norwegian Sea since the goal of this route is most frequently to reach Norway on the sea’s eastern side, and not Iceland or Greenland to the west. At the northern end of the Norwegian Sea is Spitsbergen, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean. By the way, it should be noted that this northern route is also used to reach Murmansk in Russia, most notably as an Allied supply route in World War II.

From the northwest, the Norwegian Sea also serves as a back door to the Baltic, via the North Sea. This is the route the Deutschland will sail from Germany up to Spitsbergen.

But the most direct route from the Atlantic to the Baltic is via the English Channel and North Sea, and it is to me also the most interesting. It is curious to picture England and France at the end of a water route leading to Saint Petersburg, but that’s exactly the case. Not only regular commerce, but most emigrants from Northern and Eastern Europe to North America also came along this route. It’s the Main Street of Northern Europe.

This route is comparable in the North to the Gibraltar-to-the Middle East route in the South. What to call the body of water where the route starts varies. English speakers call it the English Channel, as do the Swedes (Engelska kanalen). The Dutch seem to be more neutral and just call it The Channel (Het Kanaal). Most languages, though, call it The Sleeve. Really. To the French it’s La Manche, to the Italians La Manica. In Spanish, instead of just La Mancha, it’s el Canal de la Mancha, to avoid confusing it with the arid region of Spain of the same name where Don Quixote is supposed to be from, as in Don Quixote de la Mancha, or the musical, “Man of La Mancha”. In German it’s der Ärmelkanal (Arm=arm, Ärmel=sleeve). Russian uses essentially the French name, Ла-Манш/La-Mansh.

The English Channel/Sleeve is essentially the waterway between the English south coast and the French northwest coast. It narrows at its eastern end, the closest point between England and France, which is the Strait of Dover or the Pas de Calais, each country naming it after a town on its own side (Pas here means “pass” or “strait”). Although some may picture the Channel as going beyond that point, the Belgian and Dutch coasts and the English east coast (East Anglia) border on the bulge which is the lower end of the North Sea (referred to again below), truly making the Strait of Dover an entrance to both the North Sea, and by extension, the Baltic for the route we are discussing, just as the Strait of Gibraltar is the entrance to the Mediterranean.

This is also geologically accurate. Before the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, the sea level was about 120 meters lower than now, and the British Isles were attached to the continent via a land bridge at that lower bulge of the North Sea just mentioned. The Thames and the Rhine flowed together, turning south to empty into the Atlantic via the English Channel, so even then what is now the Strait of Dover had the quality of a waterway. At the time, most of Britain and the North Sea were covered with ice. As the ice melted, the area of that bulge now at the lower end of the North Sea became significant, since the land bridge flooded and a freshwater lake formed there instead, water not being able to escape northward because of continued ice blockage. What had been the Thames/Rhine outlet in the present Strait now became the outflow channel from the freshwater lake. At about 6500 BCE, this outflow from the lake became such that it caused catastrophic erosion, carving out the White Cliffs of Dover and widening the English Channel, a process that continues today.

It’s an interesting parallel that the history of the Atlantic-Mediterranean connection involves an inflow of water FROM the Atlantic at the Strait of Gibraltar, while the history of the English Channel/North Sea connection involves instead an outflow of water TO the Atlantic at the Strait of Dover.

Continuing our imaginary inbound trip, we come to the North Sea, which seems to be universally called that (Mer du Nord, Mar del Norte, Noordzee, Nordsee). Even though it may be illogical, lying west of Denmark and south of Norway, Danish and Norwegian comply (Norwegian: Nordsjøen, sjø being pronounced roughly SHÖ).

Ignoring on this route the connection from the North Sea to the Norwegian Sea, we turn east toward the Baltic where, just as the British Isles formed our first and outer barrier, we find that Denmark forms the barrier to entering the Baltic. That fact is made clear by the names of the two waterways through which traffic passes, the Skagerrak and the Kattegat. To understand that, we need to look at Danish geography.

Although Denmark has lots of islands, to visualize its geography one needs to picture the number 100, perhaps better written with smaller zeros as 1oo. The 1 represents the Jutland peninsula, the southern third of which is in Germany (Jütland) and the rest of which is in Denmark (Julland, and remember to ignore that pesky Danish D. Also remember that it was the Julland-Posten “The Jutland Post” that published the Muslim cartoons). The border between Germany and Denmark wasn’t finally determined until a plebescite in 1920. On the northern cape of Jutland is the town of Skagen (also the name of a Danish-American watch company), and it is getting around Skagen, then through the Danish islands, that preoccupied early sailors making their way to the Baltic, who named the Skagerrak and Kattegat.

Reaching out from Skagen is the northernmost tip of Jutland, Grenen. Gren means “branch”, so Grenen is The Branch, and describes a beachy strip of land branching out from Skagen, dividing the Skagerrak from the Kattegat. On our visit, it would have been quite a hike in the sand, so we never made it out to the very end. Surprisingly, Skagen (Skag plus –en) has an English version of its name, The Skaw.

It is Skagen that gave the Skagerrak its name, which is a shortened form of Skagen + rak, the latter being an old word for “straight”. So it’s all about sailors getting around the barricade of Denmark, since they essentially felt that the Skagerrak was a straight shoot or a straightaway past Skagen.

Turning into the Kattegat, which I always felt must have had something to do with cats, we come across some salty sailor humor. Knowing that, after the straight shoot past Skagen, they would then have to squeeze in between the Danish islands, they referred to this narrowness as the Cat Hole. Gat is an archaic word, but it means just what you imagine. Some references go so far as to sanitize the derivation or mislead the reader. The Kattegat has also been described as leading to “the anus of the Baltic”. Leave it to those salty sailors.

Getting back to 1oo. All those confusing Danish islands can be visualized in two groups, with three water passageways around them, known collectively as the Danish Straits. The left-hand mini-zero represents the major island of Fyn (FÜN) with its cluster of other islands. It is close to the 1 representing Jutland. The waterway between them, the Little Belt (Lillebælt) is narrow, and has had a rail bridge and a road bridge across it for a long time. It is an unlikely major through route to the Baltic.

The right-hand mini-zero in 1oo represents the island of Sjælland (roughly SHEL-lan), (which is Copenhagen’s island) with its cluster of other islands, including Lolland to the south. Sjælland faces Sweden across the waterway known as the Öresund (Swedish spelling) or Øresund (Danish spelling). Sund means “sound” as in Long Island Sound. The Øresund is a busy waterway leading from the Kattegat quite directly to the Baltic, yet it would seem that through traffic would want to avoid sailing right past a major city. Although Beverly and I have crossed the Öresund by ferry, in 1999 a bridge-tunnel for rail and road traffic was completed to connect Denmark and Sweden. More about that when I’m there.

[Note: Sjælland does mean Sea-land and is called Zealand in English. There is also Zeeland province in the southwest Netherlands. The logical question arises: which area is New Zealand named after? Don’t jump to conclusions. Abel Tasman was the Dutch navigator (the Dutch have been everywhere) who not only discovered the large Australian island of Tasmania south of Australia named for him, but also New Zealand southeast of Australia, which he named Nieuw Zeeland after the area in his home country. Later misinterpretation, possibly by Captain James Cook himself, ended in the English spelling of New Zealand. Therefore, New Zealand is spelled like the Danish island, but nevertheless still refers to the Dutch province. The problem doesn’t arise elsewhere. French says la Nouvelle Zélande, Zélande for the Dutch province, Seeland for the Danish island. German says Neuseeland, and a uniform Seeland for both other places, which could allow for some ambiguity.]

We now come to the third waterway, in the center between the two island groups. This is the Great Belt (Storebælt). This central route is a logical north-south passage for through traffic to the Baltic. Although we also took the east-west ferry across the Storebælt, in 1997 Denmark also completed here a bridge-tunnel for rail and road traffic. Again, more about that when I cross it later this month.

Taking the busy Öresund route gets one right into the Baltic. Taking the Storebælt route still requires sailing southeast around Lolland, at the bottom of the Sjælland island grouping. (To the southwest is the Kiel Canal through the German part of the Jutland peninsula, but more on that below, and also when I’m there.) Sailing around Lolland we come across of the last passage called a Belt/Bælt, the Fehmarn Belt/Femer Bælt.

The big metropolitan area south of this region is Hamburg. With the construction of the two bridge/tunnels mentioned above, it is now possible to go from Hamburg all the way to Copenhagen and Sweden by rail or road without waiting for ferry crossings. The only problem is, the route is indirect, first going north in the Jutland peninsula, then turning sharply east across the islands and bridge/tunnels. The direct rail and road route from Hamburg to Copenhagen continues to run at a 45° angle bridging onto the German island of Fehmarn, then via rail-and-car ferry over the Fehmarn Belt to Lolland, and continuing over existing bridges to Sjælland. This is the route we first took by train in 1961 described in the bananer story. Considering the fact that Denmark has built one bridge/tunnel on its own in the last decade, and a second one with Sweden as well, one would expect that Denmark would join with Germany on a similar project for the Fehmer Belt. In fact, talks have taken place, ideas have been put forth, a date of 2012 has been suggested, but to my knowledge, nothing is finalized yet, or even well-developed. Stay tuned.

From the Femer Bælt (or, alternatively, the Øresund), we leave Denmark and sail into the open Baltic between Sweden and Germany, but then come upon a Danish surprise, Bornholm. We have said that at one point much of southern Sweden was part of Denmark. When they gave it back to Sweden, they neverless kept the island of Bornholm, so this is a part of Denmark further east than one would expect. On the south side of the Baltic is Poland, the Kaliningrad part of Russia (a long story in itself), Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, including a couple of major Estonian islands. On the north side on the way to Russia are just Sweden and Finland, including the Swedish islands of Öland and Gotland (we’ve visited both), and the Finnish (yet still Swedish) Åland Islands, where my ferry will stop on the way to Finland, and whose story is interesting. Here the Baltic branches north into the huge Gulf of Bothnia separating Sweden and Finland, and east to the smaller, but more significant Gulf of Finland, separating Finland and Estonia, with Russia at the end. The Gulf of Finland has two capital cities on it, Helsinki and Tallinn, and one former capital, Saint Petersburg. You can well imagine why Peter the Great wanted his new city where it is, at just a boat ride to Britain, France, and beyond.

Yet the geographer interested in geologic history should not be satisfied. Why is the Baltic there? Europe, Eurasia actually, had been connected to Africa until the Atlantic flooded in. Britain had been connected to the continent until that lake flooded the connection and burst through the Strait of Dover. Well why is all of Northern Europe separated by water from Central Europe? It’s illogical that it should have started out that way. What happened? Well, the prevailing theory is that what is now the Baltic basin had once been a river. What are now the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland were two tributaries flowing into this river, which exited, not surprisingly, in the region of Denmark, and after the ice ages, somehow the whole region got flooded.

Why call it the Baltic? Well, not everyone does, but the origin of the name is unclear. One thought is that it was named in the middle ages after a mythical island, Baltia. It also could have been derived from the fact that most of the entrances are called belts—or maybe that’s the other way around. Yet the term Baltic States does refer to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, although for historical reasons, people sometimes refer to Finland as part of Scandinavia, which it is not. Furthermore, it’s worth repeating that the Baltic subfamily of Indo-European languages includes just Lithuanian and Latvian, since Estonian and Finnish are in a totally different languge family, Uralic.

As to the name, we’ll discuss the name in all the languages bordering it, as well as several other languages of note: the Italic languages all call it the Baltic: French Mer Baltique, Italian Mar Baltico, Spanish Mar Báltico, Romanian Marea Baltică, as do apparently the Russic (Slavic) languages: Polish Morze Bałtyckie, Russian Балтийское море/Baltiyskoye morye. The Baltic languages, happily, do the same: Latvian Baltijas jūra, Lithuanian Baltijos jūra (which once again shows the similarity between the two of them).

However, English, which as mentioned earlier, so often has followed the example of French and other Italic languages in preference to its Germanic heritage, is the only Germanic language to call it the Baltic. Every single other Germanic language calls it the East Sea: Dutch Oostzee, German Ostsee, Swedish Östersjön, Norwegian Østersjøen, Danish Østersøen.

This leaves just two bordering languages, our Uralic friends: Finnish Itämeri, Estonian Läänemeri. I know nothing of these languages (nor of many others we’ve discussed), but why should that stop us? First we can note from these names that these two languages are similar to each other and different from Indo-European languages. However, I have discovered some further information of interest. The Baltic lies to the west of Finland, yet Itämeri does mean East Sea. Finland was under the influence of Sweden for a long time, and this is what is called a loan-translation. Östersjön was just translated, piece by piece, into Itämeri. Anyway, Norway yields in the same way by calling the North Sea, which lies to the south of Norway, Nordsjøen, right?

Well, then, we have to admire the Estonians for being the only ones to stand their ground. The Baltic lies to the west of Estonia, and I understand that Läänemeri does mean West Sea. Good for the Estonians.

We can also use these words to illustrate how linguists come across an unknown language, yet manage to figure it out. Look at Itämeri and Läänemeri and decide what the Uralic words are for east, west, and sea.

Does one of the words you discover make you suspicious? Can you figure out a probable and reasonable explanation?

Your suspicion might have been that, if Uralic languages are not related, why does meri look so much like the words above for sea, such as mer, mar, and English mar(ine)? A reasonable explanation is that, since both Finland and Estonia have historically been part of Russia, meri is probably a loan of Russian море/morye, with the vowel at the end of both words giving further support to that theory.

Just as the Suez Canal is a man-made outlet on the Mediterranean, the Baltic has two such outlets.

One of them has an unfortunate history. The White Sea-Baltic Canal connects the Baltic through several rivers and lakes in Russia with the White Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean. I suppose in theory it is a parallel to the Suez Canal, since it is an eastern outlet at the far end of the Baltic, just as the Suez is an eastern outlet at the far end of the Mediterranean. However, its construction was a favorite project of Stalin, who used Gulag slave labor to manually build it and rush its completion between 1931 and 1933. 150,000 prisoners labored, of which 100,000 died. The canal was considered a complete failure at the time (although not by Stalin—surprise!), since it’s frozen much of the year, is only between 10 and 12 feet deep, making it useless to most ships, and even today gets light traffic, between 10 and 40 vessels per day.

Of much more interest is the aforementioned canal near Kiel running at the westernmost end of the Baltic to the North Sea. This canal is in contrast the busiest artificial waterway in the world. It’s odd that a canal should be so useful near the entrance to the Baltic rather than at the far end, but that’s the nature of Denmark and the Jutland peninsula being a barrier. Other than serving long-distance vessels, it also serves local commerce by connecting the German Baltic and North Sea coasts, avoiding the necessity of sailing up around Skagen (except for very large ships). I’ll discuss this more when I’m there, but now I just want to discuss the name of this canal. It’s the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal (NOK). This makes perfect sense, as long as you’re dealing with a language that calls the Baltic the East Sea. It makes no sense in English and other languages to call it the North-East Sea-Canal, so international useage simply refers to it as the Kiel Canal. More over the next weeks.

[Note: the Göta Canal in Sweden is an internal canal that just connects the two Swedish coasts, and cannot be used by other than “dedicated” vessels plus tiny boats.]

The clue the reader hopefully followed with Skrik is the frequent correspondence of SK in Scandinavian to SH in English. That makes Skrik into Shriek, often translated from Norwegian as The Scream, also as The Cry. The original name, oddly, does not include a “The”. It’s that extremely famous 1893 painting by the Norwegian expressionist artist Edvard Munch demonstrating contemporary angst, showing a ghostlike figure running along a boardwalk fence toward the viewer, with two round eyes and a round mouth, both hands to cheeks. The painting is, as said, one of the most famous objects to come out of Scandinavia. Munch (pronounced Munk) usually made several versions of his works; he made four of Skrik, three of which were in Oslo museums and one in private hands. The one in the National Museum was stolen in 1994, but recovered. One of the two in the Munch Museum, which we visited in 1973, was then stolen in 2004, and may have been destroyed, although two thieves were recently caught and convicted. Nevertheless, the image of Skrik remains a world icon, just as the Mona Lisa or Statue of Liberty is, frequently reproduced in pop culture, such as Macauley Culkin’s famous wide-eyed, hands-to-cheeks image from “Home Alone”.

Wordplay 7   Some languages rarely group consonants. I call them la-la languages. In Italian, saying Na-po-li is as simple as saying la-la-la. On the other hand, Germanic languages (Slavic, too) frequently cluster consonants. Just try saying the fraction 5/6 and pronouncing clearly all the consonants following the I in sixths. No wonder native speakers usually simplify that word and read the fraction as five-six’. Try this Swedish phrase (all A’s are as in whAt):

It’s actually four words grouped into two. Start with skaft. The experience with skrik should tell you that this word means shaft. Kvast means broom, so a kvastskaft would be a broomstick. Also easy (once you take it apart) is fri, which means free. A kvist is a knot (as in wood), so kvistfri means knot-free. Add the neuter adjective ending, and it becomes kvistfritt. Now say both compound words together, if you can, with all those consonant clusters.

Let’s analyze what makes this phrase interesting. The first word has two I’s corresponding to two A’s in the second. Both start with the same KV, but there are two ST’s contrasting to an SK. Also an FR contrasts with an FT. Put that all together, and you have a challenging phrase. One more Swedish phrase, rather contrived:

Again, all four A’s are as in whAt. You know that a lax is a salmon (lox), as in gravlax. You know about R plurals, so sex laxar are six salmons. An ast is a box, lack is lacquer, so we have, improbably, six salmons in a laquered box. Maybe that’s easy for YOU to say—in Swedish.