Eider Canal conservation areas. Eider Canal The Eider Canal (also called the Schleswig-Holstein Canal) was an artificial waterway in southern Denmark (later northern Germany) which connected the North Sea with the Baltic Sea by way of the rivers Eider and Levensau. Constructed between 1777 and 1784, the Eider Canal was built to create a path for ships entering and exiting the Baltic that was shorter and less storm-prone than navigating around the Jutland peninsula. In the 1880s the canal was replaced by the enlarged Kiel Canal, which includes some of the Eider Canal's watercourse. The canal's watercourse followed the border between 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