Eider Canal 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 duchies of
White Sea–Baltic Canal Camp) has been reorganized into the White Sea-Baltic Combine (Baltiysko-Belomorsky Kombinat [BBK]), still within the NKVD system, by the order of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated August 17, 1933. The Combine was charged with operating the canal and the economic development of the adjacent areas, including 2.8 million hectares of forest lands, and all the industrial facilities that had been constructed along the canal. A major part of the Combine's workforce consisted of Beltbaltlag's prisoners, around 75-85 thousand of them. In addition, the Combine included 21 "special settlements" ("spetsposyolok"), with some 30 thousand residents, mostly dispossessed