The Sea of Tranquility is only found on the moon;  however, many seas in the world have been calmer than the Baltic Sea.  For a long time, the Baltic Sea was thought of  in people’s minds as a stormy, cold, icy and remote periphery, and that is actually half true.  However, the countries of the Baltic Sea quickly became among the richest in the world.  Trading became important with the Hanseatic League, and the export-driven economy still prevails in all Baltic Sea countries.  Petri Lauka and Ari Turunen’s book ”Paha meri” (Wicked Sea) is an interestingly dark look at the history of the Baltic Sea.  In the following, I will share the thoughts raised by this book and other literature and researched information.  There have been pirates hijacking ships carrying valuable cargo, attacking Vikings and cruel slave traders, kings and crazy despots fighting for superpower status, but also merchants transporting valuable goods from the North.  The North Sea was feared in the ancient world because it was thought to have monsters, witches and whiny primitive inhabitants, and was thought to be ruled by strange gods.  Even on maps, the Baltic Sea was a vague and almost unexplored Thule (the name the explorer Pytheas gave to the lands he found in the north).  The history of the Baltic Sea has indeed been warlike and stormy.  In the end, cooperation won, but the Iron Curtain came back because of Russia’s aggressiveness.

The Baltic Sea was a mystical periphery until the Middle Ages.  Catholic popes later became interested in the remote area, and ordered crusades to be carried out, in which Sweden, Finland and the Baltic were colonized: Lithuania was the last ”pagan country” in Europe.  In the east, the rising Russian Orthodox empire, which imagined itself to be the liberator of the Slavic peoples appointed by Mother God, rose again from Kievan Rus, founded by the Vikings (Russians are genetically about 30% Vikings).  This has a dark connection to today: Russia’s tyrant and despot Putin still thinks he is the ”savior of nations” and that he is fighting the ”evil West and NATO”.  In reality, he is the world’s greatest colonialist, who, like the mad despots of his predecessors, seeks power and might.  The East-West division has been visible in the history of the Baltic Sea: they have fought for the domination of the area for centuries.  Sweden and Russia in particular went to war with each other numerous times.  Another division is the Catholic and Protestant world.  In the 16th century, the religious reformation started by Luther and others had a backlash in the 17th century, in which the Catholic Church wanted to restore its power in the north.  The geopolitical power struggle of these churches (and the worldly kings and princes allied with them) finally led in the 17th century to the 30-year war, which can be considered the world war of its time.  Later, the democratic world, German fascists and the communist Soviet Union fought for control of the Baltic Sea.  Before that, the First World War was fought, to which the Second World War was a direct continuation.  Two world wars left behind huge destruction and these were followed by a long Cold War.

The word city is in Finnish ”kaupunki” that originally comes from the word ”kauppa” that means trade. The cities of the Baltic Sea were almost all born as trading centers. The Baltic Sea does not have such considerable natural resources as many other regions. However, there was e.g. wood, beeswax, honey, amber, fish, furs and tar. Many world trade products that you couldn’t get anywhere else. These made the Baltic Sea an important trade area and many of its cities important concentrations of trade and power with universities, walls and each with great looking churches. In the past, the slave trade was also common and, for example, Finns were taken as slaves as far as Baghdad. Topelius’ fairy tale ”Birch and Star” tells about children kidnapped by the Russians in the Great Northern War of the beginning of the 18th century. The English word ”slave” comes from the word Slavs. Dominating trade also led to numerous wars and piracy throughout the Baltic Sea. However, trade and the resulting cooperation became what united different peoples. The tar trade was the oil trade of its time. Tar was especially needed in shipbuilding and a lot of it was obtained especially by burning wood from Finnish forests into tar. In the Middle Ages, the great Hanseatic trade union was born, which largely controlled the trade of the entire Baltic Sea. The trade led to peaceful cooperation between the different regions. The Baltic Sea was important in world trade, although mostly as a producer of raw materials. Great powers like the Netherlands, Germany, etc. especially needed wood and tar from the north because of their own forests.

The Baltic Sea has very sensitive nature and the whole sea was in danger of dying. Especially emissions from agriculture and settlements, especially phosphorus and nitrogen, have desolated the bottom of the Baltic Sea with the loss of oxygen they have caused.  Some fish are still poisonous due to certain environmental toxins. However, the Baltic Sea could be saved with cooperation and a common agreement. Since the 80s, the sea began to be seen as a valuable area from which there is much to draw from. However, the Baltic Sea is still haunted by blue-green algae rafts every summer. However, the Baltic Sea is no longer as polluted as imagined, but you can swim there on its numerous beaches in clean waters, taking into account the blue-green algae situation in midsummer.

Currently, the Baltic Sea has once again become the scene of global geopolitics and the battle between the democratic world and despotic Russia. The fate of Europe will be decided in the Baltic Sea and Ukraine. NATO has now hopefully created a stronghold strong enough to defend democracy. Let’s hope that the iron curtain will once again be lifted over the cold sea and cooperation will win.

Daniel Elkama