Maelstrom, the giant whirlpool of fiction, nonfiction

Welcome to the navel of the ocean.

The Maelstrom! He could resonate in our ears more terrible word terrible situation?

So we read in the novel Jules Verne, ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’, near the end. The Maelstrom, the feared large whirlpool located in Norwegian waters is also present in the story “A Descent into Maeltrom ‘by Edgar Allan Poe. The protagonist of the story is the horror of falling into the mouth the dreaded whirlpool that touches the bottom the ocean, and how, very soon, will not save the lives of its powerful currents.

Another appearance of the Maelstrom, this time on the big screen, is in the movie ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End‘ (Gore Verbinski, 2007). Recall that in this swirl the final battle of the story takes place. The Maelstrom, also called “the navel of the ocean”, has given its name to a myriad of things and in many contexts: in music, in the anime, in video games

Also present in comics, Marvel href=”https://www.enciclopediamarvel.com/card/593″ is a villain; this is called a synthesizer, an area and a skill in World of Warcraft, and is also present in Final Fantasy VIII, Diablo, Gears of War 3. An amount of artists have taken up the chaotic, powerful and lethal nature of the waters of the Maelstrom to name his works. Even the forthcoming film by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, takes the name of the great whirlpool, as it is known so far his name is Pacific Rim. Maelstrom

The Maelstrom is real

As says in the book “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ‘, the final destination of the Nautilus and its peculiar Captain Nemo, the Maelstrom, is in Norwegian waters, specifically the southern shores of the archipelago of Lofoten, in the province of Nordland.

The aspect of Maelstrom is different than portrayed in fiction, whether there is really a translational movement of water, although there are rotating current due to tides and It can be described more as a set of currents and crosscurrents that stretches for about 18 kilometers between Værøy Sorland and islands of the archipelago. We can see in the following ancient nautical chart, forgotten that art modern, how it was represented the great whirlpool. Da click to see the full map.

As the Maelstrom is part of Norse mythology in the Eddas, now part of popular culture. The Maelstrom is, together with Charybdis, one of the most famous swirls of literature and other expressions of culture.