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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.
Name
Skagerrak is an assimilation of Skagen-rak, named after Skagen, the northernmost tip of Jutland. There is no evidence of the name in ancient sources.
Rak is identical to Swedish rak (pronounced rawk), "straight"; i.e., Skagerrak is a stretch of straight sailing in the vicinity of Skagen. The ultimate source is the Proto-Indo-European root *reg-, "straight". If the Danish word rak "rubble, riff-raff" is used, Skagerrak could be intepreted as "the harasser of Skagen", referring to the changeable maritime weather conditions.
Kattegat is ancient, preceding the north Germanic languages as the source of Latin Codanus, which appears to have meant the combined waterways of Skagerrak and Kattegat. Kattegat, however, is obscene and therefore taboo in polite society. Skagerrak must be a substitution at some time after the dissimilation of north Germanic.
Geography
The Skagerrak is roughly triangular in shape, measuring 240 km in length, and between 80 and 140 km in width. It deepens toward the Norwegian coast, reaching over 700 metres at the Norwegian Trench. Some ports along the Skagerrak are Oslo and Kristiansand in Norway and Uddevalla and Strömstad in Sweden.
The Skagerrak has a salinity of 30 practical salinity units. The volume available to biomass is about 3600 km², including a wide variety of habitats from the sandbanks to Sweden and Denmark to the deeps of the Norwegian trench.
Biology
The Skagerrak provides a habitat for approximately 2000 marine species, many of them adapted to its waters. For example, a variety of Atlantic cod called the Skagerrak cod spawns off the Norwegian coast. The eggs are buoyant and the hatchlings feed on zooplankton. Juveniles sink to the bottom where they have a shorter maturity cycle (2 years). They do not migrate but remain local to Norwegian fjords.
The variety of habitats and the large volume of plankton on the surface support a prolific marine life. Energy moves from the top to the bottom according to Vinogradov's ladder of migrations; that is, some species are benthic and others pelagic but there are graded layers in which species move vertically for short distances. In addition, some species are benthopelagic, moving between surface and bottom.
The benthic species include Coryphaenoides rupestris, Argentina silus, Etmopterus spinax, Chimaera monstrosa and Glyptocephalus cynoglossus. On the top are Clupea harengus, Scomber scombrus, Sprattus sprattus. Some species that move between are Pandalus borealis, Sabinea sarsi, Etmopterus spinax.
History
In both world wars, the Skagerrak was strategically very important for Germany. One of the biggest sea battles of World War I, the Battle of Jutland, also known as the Battle of the Skagerrak, took place there May 31 to June 1, 1916. The importance of controlling this waterway, the only access to the Baltic, provided the motivation for the German invasion of Denmark and Norway during World War II.
External links
Geography of Denmark | Geography of Norway | Geography of Sweden | Straits of Europe
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"Skagerrak"