Mondsee (''Moon Lake'') is a

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

in the

Upper Austria Upper Austria ( ; ; ) is one of the nine States of Austria, states of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg (state), Salzbur ...

n part of the

Salzkammergut The Salzkammergut (, ; ) is a resort area in Austria, stretching from the city of Salzburg eastwards along the Alpine Foreland and the Northern Limestone Alps to the peaks of the Dachstein Mountains. The main river of the region is the Traun (r ...

and near the larger Attersee. Its southwestern shore marks the border between the states of

and

Salzburg Salzburg is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach, Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Alps moun ...

and also between the

Northern Limestone Alps The Northern Limestone Alps (), also called the Northern Calcareous Alps, are the ranges of the Eastern Alps north of the Central Eastern Alps located in Austria and the adjacent Bavarian lands of southeastern Germany. The distinction from the ...

in the south and the

Sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

zone of the northern

Alps The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. ...

. The Drachenwand (''Dragonwall'') is a large cliff face over the southern shore of the lake. Mondsee is one of Austria's last privately owned lakes. In August 2008, owner Nicolette Wächter announced it was up for sale. In 1864, remains of

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

pile dwellings were discovered in the lake.

New species discovered in Lake Mondsee

Two bacterial strains isolated from Lake Mondsee were recognized as new species and described as '' Polynucleobacter cosmopolitanus'' and '' Polynucleobacter duraquae'', respectively. Both species are non-

pathogenic In biology, a pathogen (, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of"), in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ. The term ...

and dwell in the lake as part of its

bacterioplankton Bacterioplankton refers to the bacterial component of the plankton that drifts in the water column. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "wandering" or "drifting", and , a Latin term coined in the 19th century by Christian Got ...

Fish community of Lake Mondsee

Fish living in the lake: *

esox ''Esox'' is a genus of freshwater fish commonly known as pike or pickerel. It is the type genus of the family (biology), family Esocidae. The type species of the genus is ''Esox lucius'', the northern pike. ''Esox'' have a fossil record exten ...

lake trout The lake trout (''Salvelinus namaycush'') is a freshwater Salvelinus, char living mainly in lakes in Northern North America. Other names for it include mackinaw, namaycush, lake char (or charr), touladi, togue, laker, and grey trout. In Lake Sup ...

brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a species of salmonid ray-finned fish and the most widely distributed species of the genus ''Salmo'', endemic to most of Europe, West Asia and parts of North Africa, and has been widely introduced globally ...

rainbow trout The rainbow trout (''Oncorhynchus mykiss'') is a species of trout native to cold-water tributary, tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in North America and Asia. The steelhead (sometimes called steelhead trout) is an Fish migration#Classification, ...

* The lake char became locally extinct in the last quarter of the 20th century * European eel *

carp The term carp (: carp) is a generic common name for numerous species of freshwater fish from the family (biology), family Cyprinidae, a very large clade of ray-finned fish mostly native to Eurasia. While carp are prized game fish, quarries and a ...

burbot The burbot (''Lota lota''), also known as bubbot, mariah, loche, cusk, freshwater cod, freshwater ling, freshwater cusk, the lawyer, coney-fish, lingcod, or eelpout, is a species of coldwater ray-finned fish native to the subarctic regions of ...

* whitefish

Mondsee in fiction

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer, best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his ...

mentions the Mondsee in his 1961

James Bond The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...

novel, '' Thunderball''. In chapter six, Blofeld reports to the members of SPECTRE that their German unit has successfully retrieved (in secret) Himmler's hoard of jewels from Lake Mondsee. Arno Geiger's 2018 novel ''Beneath Drachenwand Mountain'' is set mainly in Mondsee.

Gallery

File:Mondsee by manuel gegenhuber.jpg File:Mondsee Panorama.jpg File:Mondsee_evening.jpg File:Mondsee 080727-1.jpg File:Oberburgau, panorama vanaf tussen Marienau en Unterach met der Mondsee op de voorgrond foto7 2017-08-12 15.20.jpg File:Oberburgau, panorama vanaf tussen Marienau en Pichlauhof met de Mondsee op de voorgrond foto52017-08-12 15.38.jpg File:Oberburgau, panorama vanaf tussen Pichlauhof en Marienau met de Mondsee op de voorgrond foto62017-08-12 15.46.jpg

References

Lakes of Upper Austria {{UpperAustria-geo-stub