OPENING SPEECH BY HARALD RUNBLOM Baltic Sea Rectors Conference 2006 Uppsala

Transcription

1 OPENING SPEECH BY HARALD RUNBLOM Baltic Sea Rectors Conference 2006 Uppsala Good morning everyone! I am Harald Runblom, professor of history, at Uppsala University, and chairman of the Baltic University Programme board. In my role as chairman I started three years ago, but I have followed the Programme s activities from its very beginning in the early 1990s and contributed as teacher and textbook writer. I was present at the creation and I have in vivid memory some of the contacts between eastern and western countries during the early years of system change in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when communication between universities across the Baltic Sea was problematic. As a chairman of the Baltic University Programme board I am immensely pleased to meet and welcome our many conference guests from 13 countries (Sweden included). Two days of intensive sessions are laying ahead of us. We want them to be fruitful and I wish that we communicate in an air of frankness and generosity. I would like to stress that the Baltic University Programme is a joint venture between a large number of partners, although Uppsala University has a leading role. In the Baltic Sea Region there are more than 190 institutions of higher learning listed as partners. Their degree of activity varies. The universities that you represent are in the most active categories and we see the large attendance as a good sign of the relevance and the endeavour of the Programme. We have a common denominator and a common concern, namely the Baltic Sea, the water basin, and the land mass that surrounds the sea. And we speak about the Baltic Sea Region. I feel a need to say a few words about the Baltic and our basic concept, the Baltic Sea Region. Why this region? Why choose our definition of the region when there are competing definitions. First some words about the Baltic Sea. We at the BUP have our own definition that not everybody may feel comfortable with: We include all water from Haparanda and Torneå in the north to a line with goes from the tip of Jutland (in northern Denmark) eastwards to the province of Bohuslän. In a global perspective the Baltic Sea is not much, only 0.1 percent of the world seas, surface-wise. If one counts the volume of water in the Baltic Sea this makes up even less than 0.1 percent, because the Baltic Sea is shallow, only 60 meters on an average. Harald Runblom Speech Baltic Sea Rectors Conference Uppsala 19 October 2006, rättad version [ ] 1

2 Compare this to the Mediterranean Sea which is 1500 meters. 1 The Mediterranean Sea has a surface that is 7 times larger than the Baltic Sea. My own calculation is that one needs 170 Baltic Seas to fill up the Mediterranean. The surface of the Baltic Sea diminishes over time due to elevation of the land. There have been drastic changes over some thousand years (as you can learn from some of textbooks produced by the Programme). And land is still rising. Roughly, if my counting is correct, there is a surface loss of the sea every year comparable to some 300 football fields. This is most obvious in northern Sweden and Finland. I am not talking here as a specialist but I think that everybody should be aware of the shifting salinity of the water, both geographically and over time. Salinity is low in the north, medium high in the south. But there are also shifts with depth. The water is not fresh, it is not salt, it is brackish. To say it simple, the Baltic Sea is not a lake, and it is not an inland sea, nor is it an ocean, it is something in between or a combination if you like, and this makes life in the sea more complicated. Some researchers say that either or, either a lake or sea, is better than the between status of the Baltic Sea. Especially important, not only from political, cultural, military and transportation points of view, are the Öresund Strait and the Belts, the lock between the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic. They are very shallow and only irregularly ocean water is washed into the Baltic. My German school grammar had a sentence to illustrate comparison. The sentence was: Die Heringe der Nordsee sind grösser als die der Ostsee. (The Herings in the North Sea are larger than those in the Baltic Sea.) This illustrates in a nutshell some of conditions of life in the Baltic Sea. The fauna is poorer, and if you want to catch the big fish, turn to fishing waters outside the region. The Baltic Sea is so many things at the same time: a source of nutrition, a part of a worldwide transportation system, a field for leisure activities, a place for adventure, an area for military mobilization, an enormous battlefield, a graveyard for sailors, soldiers, tourists, and refugees. History provides many lessons. The Baltic Sea has several epithets (or nicknames): Our Sea (mare nostrum, as Swedes said in the 1600s), the Sea of Peace (a Soviet slogan). The Sea of Discord is another epithet. 2 But the Baltic Sea is also a source of inspiration and artistic creativity. The Swedish and meters according to Nationalencyklopedin. 2 Ofredens hav. Östersjön av Jan Linder och Lennart Lundberg. Harald Runblom Speech Baltic Sea Rectors Conference Uppsala 19 October 2006, rättad version [ ] 2

3 Norwegian king Oscar II (who died in 1907) is one of many examples. He wrote a poem entitled Östersjön (The Baltic Sea): When the heavy storm shakes its wing over the Baltic his heart beats proudly. He was also the king of Norway (until 1905) but he would never have said so or felt so about the Atlantic Ocean. How do you treat something which is a food store, a highway, a garbage dump and a playground at the same time? This is one of many questions which BUP students have to ponder. Two colleagues of mine, both historians as myself, have written a book (so far only in Swedish) with the title The Mediterranean of the North (Nordens medelhav). The Baltic is, indeed a Mediterranean sea, i.e. a water basin between land masses. The authors (Kristian Gerner and Klas-Göran Karlsson) however includes the North Sea. They argue that from an economic and cultural point of view the two seas have made up an entity. The Netherlands had an enormous impact in the region, especially during the 1600s (manpower, capital, ideas, art, shipbuilding and much more). This leads us over to the definition of the Baltic Sea Region. The Baltic Sea Region Our definition of the Region is simply the drainage basin of the Baltic Sea. From where precipitation (rainfall and snowfall) goes into the Baltic Sea is the Baltic Sea Region. The land area that surrounds the basin is four times larger than the sea basin itself. It includes shore states (who have immediate access to the Sea) and hinterland states (who have no Baltic Sea shore). Some states are located fully within the Region, while some are only partially in. There is a vast geographical literature on the concept of a region, and there are schemes to classify different sorts of regions. To simplify, the Baltic Sea Region is a macro-region, but we could also speak of subregions within our region, for example the Öresund region, the Kaliningrad region, etc. A map of the region will clarify a lot. Our definition is hydrologic. Areas from which the precipitation falls into the Baltic Sea are within the Baltic Sea Region. The difference between Sweden and Norway will illustrate this. With some small exceptions, precipitation from Sweden eventually goes into the Baltic Sea, while rian and snow that fall in Norway eventually finds its way out to the Atlantic, unless it evaporates and goes up in the air. This has also political and cultural implications. Harald Runblom Speech Baltic Sea Rectors Conference Uppsala 19 October 2006, rättad version [ ] 3

4 Norway is a country, which throughout its history is oriented to the west, towards Atlantic area, while Sweden is east-oriented. Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are located fully in the Baltic Sea Region, while Russia (Karelia, The St. Petersburg Region, and the Kaliningrad region), Belarus, Ukraine, The Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic, Germany and Denmark are partially in. Some countries of the Baltic Sea Region also stretches into other drainage basins. Denmark has a unique position; she sits on both the Atlantic and the Baltic Sea, and historically seen the Danish realm stretches all the way from Tallinn in Estonia to the West Indies, given Denmark s many possessions in the North Atlantic. The strongest resource of the Region is the human capital. With our definition there are somewhat more than 80 million inhabitants in the Baltic Sea Region. There is a demographic imbalance in the Region. Poland has the largest population, 39 million people. Hence, every second inhabitant in the Region is a Pole, irrespective if one counts ethnic Poles or Polish citizens. To the best of my knowledge there is a population crisis in all countries in the region because of low birth-rates. However, every country in the region is undergoing changes in its ethnic composition. In Sweden we consider the Aaland Islands in Finland as the most Swedish of all provinces (Sweden included). But I learnt from one delegate from Finland last night that there are now 74 nationalities in the population of This is a sign of our time. Historically there have always been population movements in the Region. The current migrations create both problems and possibilities. Politicians who speak about the Region nowadays speak about the comparative advantages of the Region. One such advantage is the many networks. People cooperate, travel, meet each other, agree and disagree but cooperate. I would welcome a comparative study of networking in the Baltic Sea Region and other regions. I hope that this conference will make its contribution in creating a stronger society in the Baltic Sea Region. Your mission here is important. [As you may all know, after the elections in September, Sweden has a new government which is now starting to organize its work. Already during the winter we invited the Minister of Education to the conference. For obvious reasons no minister will appear here today. Instead I will introduce Mr. Carl Lindberg. Given his Harald Runblom Speech Baltic Sea Rectors Conference Uppsala 19 October 2006, rättad version [ ] 4

5 background and qualities he is not a second choice. He has held political posts. He was Deputy State Secretary in the Department of Education from 1994 to He is special adviser for the Swedish Nation Commission for UNESCO. He has served as chairman of the National commission for Education of Sustainable Development, and us such responsible for the conference Learning to Change Our World in Göteborg/Gothenburg in He is member of UNESCO s high level panel on sustainable development. Harald Runblom Speech Baltic Sea Rectors Conference Uppsala 19 October 2006, rättad version [ ] 5