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Unravelling mysteries:
Amber and Baltrum
Already in the Stone Age amber was quite a popular material: The many prehistoric findings, particularly the one in Schwarzort (Lithuania nowadays), the Roman work places in Aquileja and the famous amber streets in the Middle Ages are proof of the fact that amber was highly appreciated during the Classical Antiquity. Prices were so high, that a piece of amber was sometimes as expensive as a slave and sometimes even more valuable than gold.
The Greek explorer Pytheas from Massila travelled from 350 to 320 BC During his journey he came to an amber island in the North Sea that he called ABALUS. Its inhabitants were said to use amber instead of wood as fuel and to sell it to their neighbours, the Teutons.
Other scholars as Diodorus Siculus call this island also BASILIA, ABALCIA, BALCIA, GLESARIA and GLAESARIA. During the period in which Emperor August ruled - around the time that Christ was born -, the East Friesian island were called "ELEKTRIDEN" ; "electron" is the Greek word for amber. If somebody then would use the expression "amber land", he would not mean the Baltic Samland (within Russia today), but the Friesian Northsea coast.
How the name BALTRUM originated is not quite clear. There is no island in the Northsea, of which the name starts with BAL and one could be tempted into linking the name BALTRUM with the legendary amber island ABALUS.
During the expedition in Germania in the year 12 BC, Drusus visited some islands. We learn more about this through Plinius the Elder, who happened to be in the land of the "Chauken" (today East Friesland) as a Roman cavalry officer between 47 and 57 AD. He had seen the coast with his own eyes. From Plinius we hear: 23 islands off the coast of the Cimbrian peninsula (Jutland) are known because of Roman wars. He mentions three islands in a row: BURCANIA (Borkum), GLAESARIA (because of a major amber finding the Roman soldiers called it "Glaesaria") and ACTANIA. The barbarians call GLAESARIA AUSTERAVIA.
Interesting to see that the word RAV as in AUSTERAVIA still is the Danish word for "amber" nowadays. Also interesting BALTIA, during Plinius's time: name of a North European island ("Meyers Konversationslexikon", 1910).
We know that the continental shelf, on which Baltrum was located in 1650, stretched out into the present territory of the island Norderney. Storm floods that took place before the beginning of the 19th century caused the fact that Baltrum has been pushed of the continental shelf. So if AUSTERAVIA was the amber island of the "Elder", we can assume that Baltrum was meant.
" A veil lies over the past. Many things are said, but can't be proven, whether positively nor negatively. But one can collect clues and when they fit like the pieces within a mosaic, then the assumption can be justified, that a corner of the veil has been lifted."
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