Codanus sinus

The Codanus sinus is the Latin name of the Baltic Sea and Kattegat.

Codanus sinus with its many islands

According to Pomponius Mela (3.31, 3.54) and Pliny the Elder (4.96), it is an "enormous bay" lying beyond the Elbe". It has "many small islands", the largest one being Scandinavia (the manuscripts of Mela have Codannovia).[1] It clearly refers to the Baltic Sea, although that is now rendered in Latin as Mare Balticum, and Pliny believed mistakenly that Scandinavia was an island, possibly due to the fact that its attachment to Europe within what is now Russia was too remote and unknown for Pliny to have known about.

The origin of the name is obscure. One rendering of Scandinavia into Latin was "Codanovia", with old Latin tending to lose initial s before another consonant (as in nix, "snow"), and the shortened form Codanus could therefore similarly refer to Scania in southern Sweden.

See also

References
  1. J.H.F. Bloemers, Sean Gillies, Perry Scalfano, R. Talbert, Tom Elliott, and Jeffrey Becker, 'Codanus? Sinus: a Pleiades place resource', Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places, 2020 <https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/98940> [accessed: 16 June 2020]
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