Maelström

Maelström ('grinding stream'), or MOSKENSTRÖM, a famous whirlpool, or more correctly current, between Moskenäs and Mosken, two of the Lofoden Isles (q.v.). The strait is habitually navigated by vessels at high tide and low tide, though in one place the water is always rough and churned into angry foam. When the wind blows directly against the current it becomes extremely dangerous, especially with spring-tides or during a north-west wind. The stories of slips, whales, &c. being swallowed up in the vortex are simply fables; at the same time, a ship once fairly under the influence of the current, would probably founder or be dashed upon the rocks, and whales have often been found stranded on the Flagstadt coast from the same cause. The current takes twelve hours to make a circular revolution. Edgar Allen Poe's imaginative description of the horrors of being sucked down by the Maelström is well known. A like dangerous current is the Saltström, at the entrance of the Salten Fjord, where a vast mass of water is poured through a narrow opening at a terrific rate. Yet steamboats pass through the Saltström, though only at high or low tide.