When it is
      flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe
      with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its impetuous ebb to
      the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest and most dreadful
      cataracts; the noise being heard several leagues off, and the
      vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship
      comes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and
      carried down to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the
      rocks; and when the water relaxes, the fragments thereof are
      thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquility are only at
      the turn of the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last but
      a quarter of an hour, its violence gradually returning. When the
      stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it
      is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts,
      and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it
      before they were within its reach. It likewise happens
      frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are
      overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to
      describe their howlings and bellowings in their fruitless
      struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to
      swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne
      down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large
      stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the
      current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if
      bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist
      of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This
      stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea—it being
      constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645,
      early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such
      noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on the
      coast fell to the ground.”

      In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this
      could have been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of
      the vortex. The “forty fathoms” must have reference only to
      portions of the channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or
      Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoe-ström must be
      immeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is
      necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into
      the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of
      Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling
      Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with
      which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of
      belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it
      appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest
      ship of the line in existence, coming within the influence of
      that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather
      the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once. The attempts to account for the phenomenon—some of which, I
      remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal—now wore
      a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally
      received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among
      the Ferroe islands, “have no other cause than the collision of
      waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux, against a ridge of
      rocks and shelves, which confines the water so that it
      precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher the
      flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural result
      of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which
      is sufficiently known by lesser experiments.”—These are the words
      of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that
      in the centre of the channel of the Maelström is an abyss
      penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part—the
      Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed,
      my imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the
      guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it
      was the view almost universally entertained of the subject by the
      Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former
      notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I
      agreed with him—for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes
      altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of
      the abyss. “You have had a good look at the whirl now,” said the old man,
      “and if you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee,
      and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that
      will convince you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-ström.”

      I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded. “Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of
      about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of
      fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all
      violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at proper
      opportunities, if one has only the courage to attempt it; but
      among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only
      ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands, as
      I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the
      southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk,
      and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over
      here among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety,
      but in far greater abundance; so that we often got in a single
      day, what the more timid of the craft could not scrape together
      in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate
      speculation—the risk of life standing instead of labor, and
      courage answering for capital. “We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast
      than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take
      advantage of the fifteen minutes’ slack to push across the main
      channel of the Moskoe-ström, far above the pool, and then drop
      down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen,
      where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to
      remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed
      and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without
      a steady side wind for going and coming—one that we felt sure
      would not fail us before our return—and we seldom made a
      mis-calculation upon this point.