Danish straits, fjords and seas, found on the map

The four seas around the country, the belts and the Sound between them, the fjords cut into the coast, and Arresø. Everything the Baltic sends to the North Sea goes through one of three gaps here, and all three are on this map.

14 to find, 8 a run.

2 rounds, 6 of 8 to pass each. Pass one and its places are yours.

⚔️ Challenge someone to Danish straits, fjords and seas

14 straits, fjords and seas · 4 groups

What the map tells you about each one

The paragraph the game shows when you find each one. Reading them first is not cheating.

Lakes1 on the map

Arresø: Arresø is the largest lake in Denmark at about 40 square kilometers, and one of the shallowest of that size anywhere: its deepest point is under six meters, so the whole thing warms up and stirs in a wind. It had no outlet worth the name until a canal was dug to Frederiksværk in the 1710s to power the ironworks there, and it has drained that way ever since.

Fjords3 on the map

Isefjord: The Isefjord is the larger of the two inlets on the north coast of Zealand and shares its mouth with the other one. It is shallow, mostly under ten meters, and warm enough in summer for the eelgrass beds the fjord is known for. Orø, the island in the middle of it, has a few hundred residents and no bridge, and Denmark’s first industrial ironworks was set up at Frederiksværk on its eastern shore in the 1750s.
Ringkøbing Fjord: Ringkøbing Fjord is a lagoon of about 300 square kilometers, cut off from the North Sea by Holmsland Klit, a strip of dune barely a kilometer wide. Its opening used to wander up and down the coast with the sand until a channel was cut at Hvide Sande in 1931 with a sluice on it, and the salinity of the whole lagoon has been set by hand ever since.
Roskilde Fjord: Roskilde Fjord is about 40 kilometers long and rarely more than a few meters deep, which is exactly why five ships were filled with stones and sunk across the narrows at Skuldelev around 1070: the channel is the only way in, and blocking it shut the door on Roskilde. The ships came up in 1962 and are in the museum on the water. Frederiksborg and Jægerspris both stand on the fjord.

Straits and belts5 on the map

Fehmarn Belt: The Fehmarn Belt is eighteen kilometers of water between Lolland and Fehmarn, and it is being closed. The tunnel under it, dug since 2020 as sections cast on shore and sunk into a trench, will be the longest immersed tunnel in the world when it opens, and will put Copenhagen about two and a half hours from Hamburg by train. Until then the crossing is the ferry from Rødbyhavn to Puttgarden.
Great Belt: Storebælt is the deepest and busiest of the three ways out of the Baltic, and every ship too large for the Sound uses it. Until 1998 crossing it meant an hour on a ferry. The East Bridge that replaced them has a main span of 1,624 meters, which was the longest of any suspension bridge in the world when it opened, and the trains go under the water rather than over it, through a tunnel finished the year before.
Limfjord: The Limfjord is a sound rather than a fjord: it cuts clean through Jutland, so everything north of it is an island. It has not always been open at both ends. The western outlet silted up in the Middle Ages and stayed shut until a storm broke through the Agger isthmus in 1825, after which the fjord turned salty and the freshwater fish in it died. Its oysters are the only wild European flat oysters left being fished commercially in the country.
Little Belt: Lillebælt is the narrowest of the three, about 700 meters across at Middelfart, and also the deepest, dropping to around eighty meters where the current has scoured it. That current is why porpoises gather here in the greatest numbers anywhere in the world, and why the town had a licensed whale hunt until 1902. Two bridges cross it, one from 1935 and one from 1970.
Øresund: The Sound is about four kilometers across at its narrowest and one of the busiest waterways in the world. The Sound Dues, charged on every passing ship from 1429 until 1857 and collected under the guns of Kronborg, were for a long time the largest single source of Danish crown revenue. The bridge and tunnel opened on 1 July 2000, sixteen kilometers in all, and about 20,000 people now cross it to work each day.

Seas and oceans5 on the map

Baltic Sea: The Baltic is the largest body of brackish water in the world. Something like two hundred rivers empty into it and its only way out is past Denmark, so its water is a fraction as salty as the ocean, and it freezes in a hard winter. Shipworm cannot live in water that fresh, which is why wooden wrecks survive on its floor in a way they do not anywhere else.
Kattegat: The Kattegat is the middle room between the Baltic and the North Sea, shallow and rarely more than about eighty meters, and the place where fresh water flowing out meets salt water flowing in. That layering is part of why its deeper water loses oxygen in summer. The name is old Dutch for cat’s throat, from a passage so narrow a cat would struggle through it, which is roughly what it felt like to sailors coming down from the Skagerrak.
North Sea: The Danish North Sea coast is about 500 kilometers of sand, dune and wind, with almost no natural harbor on it, which is why Esbjerg had to be dug. Denmark has produced oil and gas from its own sector since 1972, and the world’s first offshore wind farm was built at Vindeby in 1991. The sea is shallow, mostly under a hundred meters, and it was dry land walked by people until about 6,000 BC.
Skagerrak: The Skagerrak is the deep end of the passage out to the North Sea, dropping to some 700 meters in the Norwegian Trench, and its water is properly salty in a way the Baltic never is. It meets the Kattegat at Grenen, the spit above Skagen, where the two currents run visibly into each other. The largest naval battle of the First World War was fought at its mouth in 1916, which is why German accounts call it the Skagerrakschlacht and British ones the Battle of Jutland.
Wadden Sea: The Wadden Sea is the largest unbroken system of tidal flats in the world, running from the Netherlands to Denmark, and the Danish part joined the World Heritage list in 2014. Twice a day the sea goes out and leaves a plain you can walk to the islands across. Ten to twelve million migrating birds pass through in a year, and in spring the starlings gather over the marshes in flocks so dense the Danes call it the black sun.

Now find all 14 on the map

How this one works

How many straits, fjords and seas are on the map?

14. Every one of them is on the map, and a run asks 8 of them. Pass a round and the places you found in it drop out of the pool, so the next run is what you have left.

What is a round?

A run of 8 questions, and 6 right passes it. 2 rounds cover the whole map, and the counter at the top of the Denmark page counts the ones behind you. Passing is what banks a round's finds: miss the mark and nothing is taken off the map, so every place that round asked about is still there to be asked again. A round is always the places you have not found yet, and when fewer than five are left it is topped up with a few you have found as review, so the last round is never one or two questions. Three quarters of it passes it.

Can I start the map over?

Yes. "Reset this map" under the counter puts all 14 back in the pool and sets the rounds to zero the moment you press it, so the whole map is there to be found again from nothing. It clears this map only; the other maps of Denmark keep their progress.

Do I need an account?

No. The game plays in the page, and a guest's progress is kept in their own browser. Signing in carries it between devices and earns XP for a run.

What happens when I get one wrong?

The map names what you actually hit, then lights up the right answer in green and tells you something about the place. Missing one is how most of this map gets learned.

The other maps of Denmark

Danish regions5 to find Danish cities24 to find

The same map for other countries

North America

Oceania

South America

All of Denmark’s maps together on the Denmark atlas page, the country itself on the Denmark guide, and the other two hundred on the world map.