Baltic Sea Gulf of Riga, and the Bay of Gdańsk. The Baltic Proper is bordered on its northern edge, at the latitude 60°N, by the Åland islands 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 west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula. The Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal. Administration The Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the
White Sea–Baltic Canal the entrance of the canal into the White Sea. There was even a play, a comedy, written about the canal by Nikolay Pogodin. A memory of the canal is also preserved in the Russian language, in the words ""zeka"", ""zek", "z/k"" for "inmate". In Russian, "inmate", "incarcerated" is (), usually abbreviated to "" in paperwork, and pronounced as "" (, "zeh-KA"), which gradually transformed into "" and "", "zek" (both pronounced as ). The word is still in colloquial use. Originally the abbreviation stood for (), literally "incarcerated canal-army-man". The latter term coined in an analogy with the words meaning