Amber colors in Amber Land

Baltic amber

Lithuanian girls in the national dress, which includes an amber necklace.
Baltic amber has a very wide distribution, extending over a large part of northern Europe and occurring as far east as the Urals.
Baltic amber yields on dry distillation succinic acid, the proportion varying from about 3% to 8%, and being greatest in the pale opaque or bony varieties. The aromatic and irritating fumes emitted by burning amber are mainly due to this acid. Baltic amber is distinguished by its yield of succinic acid, hence the name succinite proposed by Professor James Dwight Dana, and now commonly used in scientific writings as a specific term for the Prussian amber. Succinite has a hardness between 2 and 3, which is rather greater than that of many other fossil resins. Its specific gravity varies from 1.05 to 1.10. An effective tool for Baltic amber analysis is IR spectroscopy. It enables the distinction between Baltic and non-Baltic amber varieties because of a specific carbonyl absorption and it can also detect the relative age of an amber sample. On the other hand, it has been suggested by scientists that succinic acid is no original component of amber, but a degradation product of abietic acid. (Rottlaender, 1970)
Although amber is found along the shores of a large part of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, the great amber-producing area for many centuries was the promontory of Sambia or Samland, the coast around Königsberg in Prussia, since 1945 part of Russia. About 90% of the world’s extractable amber is still located in the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia on the Baltic Sea.[13] Pieces of amber torn from the seafloor are cast up by the waves, and collected at ebb-tide. Sometimes the searchers wade into the sea, furnished with nets at the end of long poles, which they drag in the seaweed containing entangled masses of amber; or they dredge from boats in shallow water and rake up amber from between the boulders. Divers have been employed to collect amber from the deeper waters. Systematic dredging on a large scale was at one time carried on in the Curonian Lagoon by Messrs Stantien and Becker, the great amber merchants of Königsberg. At the present time extensive mining operations are conducted in quest of amber. The pit amber was formerly dug in open works, but is now also worked by underground galleries. The nodules from the blue earth have to be freed from matrix and divested of their opaque crust, which can be done in revolving barrels containing sand and water. The sea-worn amber has lost its crust, but has often acquired a dull rough surface by rolling in sand.
Since the establishment of the Amber Road, amber known as “Prussian gold” (which is now also referred to as “Lithuanian gold”) has substantially contributed economically and culturally. Amber jewellery and amberware is offered to foreign tourists in most souvenir shops as distinctive to Lithuania and its cultural heritage. The seaside town of Palanga has the Palanga Amber Museum dedicated to amber. Amber can also be found in Latvia as well as Denmark, northern Germany, Poland, and, since the takeover of Prussia in 1945, also in Russia.

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