Eider (river)

The Eider (German: Eider [ˈaɪdɐ] ; Danish: Ejderen; Old Norse: Egða; Latin: Egdor or Eidora) is the longest river on the Jutland Peninsula, and flows through the German state of Schleswig-Holstein along its entire length. The river crosses the peninsula almost across its entire width from east to west. It starts between Bordesholm and Preetz. Shortly after its source, the river reaches the city of Kiel on the Baltic Sea, whose southwestern city limits it partially forms. At the point where the Eider is only a few kilometers from the Baltic Sea –at Lake Schulensee– a terminal moraine –the Hornheimer Riegel– blocks its path, and the Eider from then on turns towards the much more distant North Sea, into which it flows at Tönning. The wide estuary of the Eider is called Purrenstrom, which is crossed by a closeable storm surge barrier, the Eider Barrage. It has tidal flats and brackish water. The lower part of the Eider was used as part of the Eider Canal until that canal was replaced by the modern Kiel Canal. The Eider has been an important border river in the past. In the Early Middle Ages the river lay within the settlement area of the West Germanic tribe of the Angles, who together with the Saxons and Frisians crossed the North Sea from there to settle in England. From around 800 to 1200, the Eider was the border between the Saxons and Polabian Slavs to the south, and the Danish Forest to the north. North of this border forest settled the Danes and North Frisians, as reported by Adam of Bremen in 1076. From 804 to 1864 –with two brief interruptions– the river constituted the border between the Frankish Empire, and later East Francia and the Holy Roman Empire, to the south, and Denmark...