Danube once appears as the mother of Vrtra, "a dragon blocking the course of the rivers." The Finnish word for Danube is Tonava, which is most likely derived from the word for the river in Swedish and German, "Donau". Its Sámi name "Deatnu" means "Great River". It is possible that "dānu" in Scythian as in Avestan was a generic word for "river": "Dnieper" and "Dniestr", from "Danapris" and "Danastius", are presumed to continue Scythian "*dānu apara" "far river" and "*dānu nazdya-" "near river", respectively. The river was known to the ancient Greeks as the "Istros" (Ἴστρος) a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian
Commissions of the Danube River it lasted eighty-two years. A separate commission, the International Danube Commission, or IDC, was authorized to control commerce and improvements upriver beyond the Danube Delta and was supposed to be permanent, but it was not formally organized until after 1918. The European Commission of the Danube was the first — and for a long time the only — international body to have serious police and juridical powers over private vessels and individual people, and it was seen in 1930, for example, by history professor Glen A. Blackburn of the United States as a "unique" organization. Without territorial possessions, it is