Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1884 — The Maelstrom. [ARTICLE]

The Maelstrom.

On the 10th of July, 1856, I was sailing very near to the spot where the maelstrom is marked on our English maps, and therefore looked for it on the detailed sailing-charts and other Norwegian maps that were on board. It was not to be found on any of them. I then asked the Captain as to its whereabouts, he having had much experience in these parts. He told me that the only information he had ever been able to obtain concerning it was derived from English geography books and the aocounts of English passengers ; that the fishermen who lived on the islands on each side of it knew nothing at all about it in consequence of thsir ignorance of the English language. He was cruelly satirical. There is a current between Lofoden and Mosken (the position usually assigned to the fabulous vortex) known as moskostrommen, one of the many tidal currents that run through the sounds between the. multitude of islands constituting the Lofoden archipelago. At the spring tides, when heavy gales were blowing from the east or west, the moskostrom is sufficiently dangerous to be avoided by prudent navigators, but in fair and calm weather it is no more dangerous than that between the arches of Putney bridge. As Tonsberg says', in has “Norge” (the national illustrated handbook of Norway), “the fishermen dwelling on the spot have no fear of the strom; they fish in it and suffer their boats to drift on its surface.” For reasons that I have explained this current mnf have been more rapid in former times than now, but it was never anything but a simple tide stream running through a channel. —The Gentleman’s Magazine .