|
In Homer’s Iliad, Jason and the Argonauts travel through numerous obstacles before
finding the golden fleece of legend. One such phenomenon was the Maelstrom, a spinning
whirlpool that swallowed ships with no mercy. Nicholas de Lynna, a Franciscan friar in
the fourteenth century, may have been the first foreign traveler to encounter Norway’s
real Maelstrom, a whirlpool so famous that its name has become the generic name for all
whirlpools.
Similar spinning pools also exist in the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily, as
well as in Japan’s Naruto Strait. However, it is Norway’s Maelstrom that remains the
most infamous. Edgar Allen Poe writes of it in his short story, “A Descent into the
Maelstrom.” In the tale, a miscalculation of tides and an unforeseen storm trap three
fishermen in a narrow passage, where the waters begin to whirl until “the boat appeared
to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast
in circumference, prodigious in depth.”
The Maelstrom is caused by the sharply rising seafloor between the Norwegian islands of
Moskenesoy and Mosken. The topography constricts the tide flow, so that a fresh, rising
tide often begins to rush inward before the previous tide has finished flowing out. The
result is a conflict of water, channeled by a rocky seafloor, that whirls and spins into
a confused mass.
|
![[forces of nature]](../fon.gif){kind=small}
![[heading]](head.gif)
![[images]](images.jpg)
