Danish straits
The Danish straits are the three channels connecting the Baltic Sea to the North Sea through the Kattegat and Skagerrak. They transect Denmark, and are not to be confused with the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. The three main passages are:
Great Belt, Danish: Storebælt
Little Belt, Danish: Lillebælt
Øresund, (Danish) / Öresund (Swedish)
History
The Copenhagen Convention of 1857 made the Danish straits an international waterway.
Naming and geography
Specficially, there are five straits named 'belt' (Danish: bælt), the only ones in the world. Several straits are named 'sound' (Danish, Swedish and German: sund). Where an island is situated between a belt and a sound, typically the broader strait is called belt and the more narrow one is the sound:
Als:
- separated from the continent by Alssund
- separated from Fyn by the southern part of the Little Belt, an area referred to in German (but not Danish) as Alsenbelt
separated from the continent by Alssund
separated from Fyn by the southern part of the Little Belt, an area referred to in German (but not Danish) as Alsenbelt
