• Waffelmeister@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    I think it refers to their location in relation to the river Enns. Upper Austira was called “ob der Enns”, Lower Austria was called “nied der Enns” in the middle ages.

    • bloor@feddit.org
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      14 hours ago

      Well, rivers usually flow from higher to lower points, so the explanation is still somewhat correct ;) but to be fair, that’s more the reasoning I found for myself, tieing it to rivers makes more sense in a historical context.

      • Waffelmeister@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I didn’t mean to correct you, just adding some context.

        Spoiler

        The river Enns goes from south from the mountains to north and flows into Danube. Upper Austria is on the west of river Enns and Lower Austria on the east. Danube goes trough both. North of Danube is a plateau which makes it (in the plateau area) hard to say Lower Austria is lower. But if you compare two cities on the boarder between Upper and Lower, the one in Lower Austria is 10m lower. Which makes sense, since the Danube flows in this direction. So again, I am not trying to correct you.