River Els

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The River Els (Northumbric: ᛁᚪᚳᛋᛠᛚᛋ, Iaksaels) is a major river in Nordania. At 940 km, it is the longest river in Ambrose and contributes to one of the largest drainage basins on the Valí Peninsula. The river rises in the Forslow mountains of the thanedred of Ulfstead and empties into the Sea of the Njord at Elsbridge.

The river is the most important waterway in Ambrose, historically serving as a vital link between the port cities of Harwick and the insular Northumberland. Even today, it remains heavily-travelled, with many container ships proceeding upriver from Elsbridge to other important river towns like Pembroke and Peel Godred. Furthermore, the extensive fisheries of the river, while previously threatened by pollution, are now protected as the Els Fishery Reserve of the National Reserve System. The Tredegar High Dam, at Tredegar in Hawin Russaugh, is one of the largest hydro-electric power station in Esquarium.

Regarded as the "gateway to the Ambrosian interior", the Els takes a prominent role in the Ambrosian cultural consciousness. In the Romantic era, the River became closely associated with the Ambrosian national identity; its landscapes were important in the development of the eponymous Els River School of romantic paintings, and it heavily influenced the environmentalist views of the Ambrosian Idealist movement. In his writings, Ambrosian author Baxter Godric immortalized it as the Great White River.

Name

Scholarly consensus is unclear as to the precise origin of the name Els as description for the river. However, it is generally accepted that this name had developed by the time of Hréþhelma, when it was explicitly referenced in the 724 Edict of Arles. It was in common use by the mid 9th century, when the Castle Els was built at its mouth and took the name of the river.

Some analysts posit, based on recently-discovered surviving Anglo-Saxon texts, that the name Els is not a Braesian name at all, but that it is instead rooted in the Old Anglish prefix el, meaning "strange, barbarous, or foreign". This could be in reference to the Northumbrian people, whose Voragonevanic language and culture were utterly alien to the Anglo-Saxons of Harwick — for the Harwickers of the early medieval period, the river would have been the only artery to the Northumbrian settlements in the far north of the continent.