The Baltic - Part One, the Mediterranean of the North

Last year I wrote about my subconscious process when deciding where to travel in Spring 22 while we were homeless.  I recounted the inspiration that led to the discovery of the circular benzine molecule likewise inspired me that to complete the circumnavigation the great cities of antiquity around the Mediterranean.  

Thus, after traveling to Gdansk, Poland on the Baltic last fall, we decided to explore the rest of that far NE corner of Europe and visit the three “Baltic Counties” (a misnomer I’ll explain later).  As I was exploring our routing options it came to me like the benzine dream, but this time the inspiration was not chemistry, but design.  

 

One of the first exercises in design studios is understanding how we see “figure vs ground”.  And how shifting that focus changes what we cognitively understand.  The classic example is the faces/vase graphic.  Do you see two faces silhouetted below or a single white vase?  Can you switch back and forth?

 

Figure/Ground Study

 

Political and geographic boundaries often bias how we see things.  In my home state of Washington, we always refer to its major body of water as “Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands” (only boaters know the water names around the islands).  We primarily see the land, not the water. 

Our new home in Anacortes is on an island in the NW corner 

between the San Juan Islands and the mainland.

Likewise, our Canadian cousins to the north refer to their body of water between Vancouver Island and the Mainland as the “Strait of Georgia” disembodied from waters in the south.  

Vancouver Island dominates Strait of Georgia

Seeing only the “figure” of  land/political boundaries and not the “ground” of major waterways can have disastrous impact.  Overfishing in one body of water reduces fishery in the other.  Likewise, pollution in one effect water quality hundreds of miles away.  Fortunately, environmental activists, Native Americans, and governmental officials have recently recognized the whole “figure” of the waterway separate from the political “ground” and have named the body The Salish Sea.  That, and its full watershed, allows collective management of the resource.   

 

The Blue is the whole Salish sea and its tributaries

far greater than the sum of the parts. 

For another example: do you know what the grey figure below represents?  

This is the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean of the North.  (West is to the top instead of our North Up bias.)  Here’s how we typically see it, from a land/political boundary perspective with North being up.

Except for Germany's coast, we'll visit all the countries. 

Water courses have always been main transportation pathways.  Early human migration out of Africa were often by water routes: The Mediterranean to Western Europe (still today); Black Sea and Caspian Sea through the Caucasus to eastern Europe and northern Asia.  Great empires were founded on control of waterways: Greek, Roman, Portugal, Netherlands, Ottoman, Russia, and Britain. And in the East China, Japan and Korea on their nearby China Seas and Sea of Japan. 

 

The great age of Discovery was by water routes, across the Atlantic to the new world, and around the Horn of Africa and across the Arabian Sea for trade with India.  Across the Pacific, first by the Chinese and later by Polynesians and Europeans.  The littoral was where most settlements and first cities developed.  After exploring the littoral, continental exploration was via lakes and rivers.  The Dnipro and Volga rivers provide access by the Vikings to settle Kievan Rus while Moscow was only a village. The Ohio, St Lawrence, Mississippi/Missouri, Yukon and McKinzie rivers in North America, and the Amazon in South America provide access deep into the interior of the continent for settlement.  The Yangzi and Yellow rivers penetrated like a needle and thread into China stitching the empire together, while the Ganges was the life blood of India from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal.  The Nile and Congo provided access to headwaters of Lake Victoria and interior terra incognito in central Africa.  Until recently most all war, trade, communication, and cultural exchange was by water routes: rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans.  

 

Early map of N America showing principal waterways.

Thus, the design epiphany of figure/ground helped me realize that our trip should not be focused on individual countries, but on the Baltic Sea as a whole. For like the Mediterranean in the south, the Baltic has been, and continues to be the connective tissue between the cultures and countries of the north.  

 

Having been to Copenhagen in the far west and Gdansk on the north coast of Poland, we decided to visit the rest of the littoral countries and cities to get a complete view of the region. We rounded out our itinerary by arriving in Helsinki, Finland; taking the ferry across the Baltic and driving through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, stopping at the boarder of Russia in the east and the separate Russian territory of Kaliningrad to the south.  We then flew to Stockholm, Sweden meeting Teigan before returning to London.  They are all Baltic Countries, not just the three we refer to.

 

Next Post:  Finland and Estonia – Uralic Language.