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Roņu Dīķis
Ruhnu (; ; ) is an Estonian island in the Gulf of Riga in the Baltic Sea. Its territory of is administratively part of Saare ''maakond'' (county). Ruhnu lies geographically closer to the coast of Courland on the mainland of Latvia than it is to any point in the rest of Estonia. With less than 150 official residents, the Ruhnu '' vald'' (parish) has the smallest population of Estonia's 79 municipalities. Before 1944, it was for centuries populated by ethnic Swedes and traditional Swedish law was used. Important Bird Area The island has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports significant numbers of long-tailed ducks and velvet scoters, both wintering and on passage. History The first archaeological artifacts of human activity in Ruhnu, assumed to be related to seasonal seal hunting, date back to around 5000 BC. The time of arrival of the first ancient Scandinavians in Ruhnu and the beginning of a permanent Swedi ...
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Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the world's largest brackish water basin. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. It is a Continental shelf#Shelf seas, shelf sea and marginal sea of the Atlantic with limited water exchange between the two, making it an inland sea. The Baltic Sea drains through the Danish straits into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, Great Belt and Little Belt. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia (divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea), the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gdańsk. The "Baltic Proper" is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60°N, by Åland and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the ...
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Velvet Scoter
The velvet scoter (''Melanitta fusca'') is a large Merginae, sea duck, which breeds over the far north of Europe and the Palearctic west of the Yenisey basin. The genus name is derived from Ancient Greek ''melas'' "black" and ''netta'' "duck". The species name is from the Latin ''fuscus'' "dusky brown". Taxonomy The velvet scoter was Species description, formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, tenth edition of his ''Systema Naturae'' under the binomial nomenclature, binomial name ''Anas fusca''. Linnaeus specified the type locality (biology), type locality as European seas but restricted this to the Swedish coast in 1761. The velvet scoter is now one of six species placed in the genus ''Melanitta'' that was introduced in 1822 by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek ''melas'' meaning "black" and ''netta'' meaning "duck". The specific epithet ''fusca'' is from Latin ''fuscus' ...
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Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also refer to the Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes a part of northern Finland). In English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for Nordic countries. Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included in Scandinavia for their Ethnolinguistics, ethnolinguistic relations with Sweden, Norway and Denmark. While Finland differs from other Nordic countries in this respect, some authors call it Scandinavian due to its economic and cultural similarities. The geography of the region is varied, from the Norwegian fjords in the west and Scandinavian mountains covering parts of Norway and Sweden, to the low and flat areas of Denmark in the south, as well as archipelagos and lakes in the east. Most of the population ...
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Pinniped
Pinnipeds (pronounced ), commonly known as seals, are a widely range (biology), distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic, mostly marine mammals. They comprise the extant taxon, extant families Odobenidae (whose only living member is the walrus), Otariidae (the eared seals: sea lions and fur seals), and Phocidae (the earless seals, or true seals), with 34 extant species and more than 50 extinct species described from fossils. While seals were historically thought to have descended from two ancestral lines, molecular phylogenetics, molecular evidence supports them as a monophyletic group (descended from one ancestor). Pinnipeds belong to the suborder Caniformia of the order Carnivora; their closest living relatives are musteloids (Mustelidae, weasels, Procyonidae, raccoons, skunks and red pandas), having diverged about 50 million years ago. Seals range in size from the and Baikal seal to the and southern elephant seal. Several species exhibit ...
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Runö
Ruhnu (; ; ) is an Estonian island in the Gulf of Riga in the Baltic Sea. Its territory of is administratively part of Saare County, Saare ''maakond'' (county). Ruhnu lies geographically closer to the coast of Courland on the mainland of Latvia than it is to any point in the rest of Estonia. With less than 150 official residents, the Ruhnu Parish, Ruhnu ''Parish (administrative division), vald'' (parish) has the smallest population of Estonia's 79 Municipalities of Estonia, municipalities. Before 1944, it was for centuries populated by Estonian Swedes, ethnic Swedes and Law of Sweden, traditional Swedish law was used. Important Bird Area The island has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports significant numbers of long-tailed ducks and velvet scoters, both wintering and on passage. History The first archaeological artifacts of human activity in Ruhnu, assumed to be related to seasonal pinniped, seal hunting, date back to ...
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Soviet Re-occupation Of The Baltic States (1944)
The Soviet Union (USSR) occupied most of the territory of the Baltic states in its 1944 Baltic Offensive during World War II. Dear (2001). p. 85. The Red Army regained control over the three Baltic capitals and encircled retreating Wehrmacht and Latvian forces in the Courland Pocket where they held out until the final German surrender at the end of the war. Soviet offensives and re-occupation By 2 February 1944 the siege of Leningrad was over and the Soviet troops were on the border with Estonia. Bellamy (2007). p. 621. Having failed to break through, the Soviets launched the Tartu Offensive on 10 August, and the Baltic Offensive on 14 September with forces totalling 1.5 million. The High Command of the German Army issued Operation Aster on 16 September, whereby the Estonian forces would cover the German withdrawal. Bellamy (2007). p. 622. Soon after the Soviet reoccupation of the Estonian capital Tallinn, the first mission of the NKVD was to stop anyone escaping fr ...
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German Occupation Of Estonia During World War II
In the course of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany invaded Estonia in July–December 1941, and occupied the country until 1944. Estonia had gained Estonian War of Independence, independence in 1918 from the then-warring German Empire, German and Russian Empires. However, in the wake of the August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Soviet Union had Occupation of the Baltic states, invaded and occupied Estonia in June 1940, and the country was formally annexed into the USSR in August 1940. In the summer of 1941, the German invaders were at first seen by most Estonians as liberators from Soviet terror, since the Germans arrived only a week after the June deportation, mass deportation of tens of thousands of people from Estonia and other territories Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940), occupied by the USSR in 1939–1941: Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Nor ...
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Occupation Of The Baltic States
The occupation of the Baltic states was a period of annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union from 1940 until its Dissolution of the Soviet Union, dissolution in 1991. For a period of several years during World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the Baltic states after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The initial Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940), Soviet invasion and occupation of the Baltic states began in June 1940 under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, made between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in August 1939 before the outbreak of World War II. The three independent Baltic states, Baltic countries were annexed as constituent Republics of the Soviet Union in August 1940. Most Western countries did not recognise this annexation, and considered it illegal. In July 1941, the German occupation of the Baltic states during World War II, occupation of the Baltic states by Nazi Germany took place, just weeks after its Operation Barbarossa, invasion ...
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German Occupation Of Estonia During World War I
Estonia was under military occupation by the German Empire during the later stages of the First World War. On 11–21 October 1917, the Imperial German Army occupied the West Estonian archipelago (Moonsund archipelago), including the larger islands of Saaremaa (''Ösel''), Hiiumaa (''Dagö''), and Muhu (''Moon''). Fighting in Estonia ceased whilst negotiations over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk took place. These broke down in February 1918, and to put pressure on the new Bolshevik regime of Soviet Russia to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Germans landed on the mainland of Estonia on 18 February 1918 and marched on Haapsalu (''Hapsal'') on 21 February 1918. The German forces occupied Valga (''Walk'') on 22 February, and Pärnu (''Pernau''), Viljandi (''Fellin'') and Tartu (''Dorpat'') on 24 February. Tallinn (''Reval'') was occupied on 25 February 1918, and in the rest of the Estonian mainland the last town captured by German forces was Narva (''Narwa'') on 4 March 1918. Fo ...
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Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the list of largest empires, third-largest empire in history, behind only the British Empire, British and Mongol Empire, Mongol empires. It also Russian colonization of North America, colonized Alaska between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity. From the 10th to 17th centuries, the Russians had been ruled by a noble class known as the boyars, above whom was the tsar, an absolute monarch. The groundwork of the Russian Empire was laid by Ivan III (), who greatly expanded his domain, established a centralized Russian national state, and secured inde ...
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Kingdom Of Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic country by both area and population, and is the fifth-largest country in Europe. Its capital and largest city is Stockholm. Sweden has a population of 10.6 million, and a low population density of ; 88% of Swedes reside in urban areas. They are mostly in the central and southern half of the country. Sweden's urban areas together cover 1.5% of its land area. Sweden has a diverse climate owing to the length of the country, which ranges from 55°N to 69°N. Sweden has been inhabited since prehistoric times around 12,000 BC. The inhabitants emerged as the Geats () and Swedes (), who formed part of the sea-faring peoples known as the Norsemen. A unified Swedish state was established during the late 10th century. In 1397, Sweden joined Norway and Denmark to form ...
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