The Codanus sinus is the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

name of the

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 ...

and

Kattegat The Kattegat (; ; ) is a sea area bounded by the peninsula of Jutland in the west, the Danish straits islands of Denmark and the Baltic Sea to the south and the Swedish provinces of Bohuslän, Västergötland, Halland and Scania in Swede ...

Pomponius Mela Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer. He was born at the end of the 1st century BC in Tingentera (now Algeciras) and died AD 45. His short work (''De situ orbis libri III.'') remained in use nea ...

(3.31, 3.54) and

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

(4.96) describe it as an "enormous bay" lying beyond the

Elbe The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...

", with "many small islands", the largest one being

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 ...

(''Codannovia'' in Pomponius Mela).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 ccessed: 16 June 2020/ref> It is commonly identified with the Baltic Sea, which is otherwise rendered in Latin as ''Mare Balticum''. Pliny believed that Scandinavia was an island, possibly because its attachment to Europe 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 Scania ( ), also known by its native name of Skåne (), is the southernmost of the historical provinces of Sweden, provinces () of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous w ...

in southern Sweden.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Codanus Sinus Scandinavia Geography of Germania