ABSTRACT
The Baltic Sea Region (BSR) offers a fascinating example of multi-level borderness and territorialisation, reaching from the local to the continental scale, while also combining 'real' with 'virtual' spaces and associated borders. The BSR illustrates the multi-scalar nature and varying objectives and expectations associated with, or attached to, meanings of borders and boundaries, and the spaces defined by them be they actually existing or imagined. The BSR embraces four important cultural-historic and political-systemic fault lines: the Nordic, West Germanic, Finno-Ugric and Slavic worlds. The BSR as a notional space serves to project a common communication platform on which more detailed shared interests may be identified and pursued. The BSR is primarily a political-economic construct to serve as a stage for developing linkages between actors with shared objectives. Belonging to the BSR takes on different scales either complete countries, or parts of thereof, in the form of individual, formally established regions or counties.
