It means everything to them that people still enjoy their adventures and take the time to let them know that they’re swimming (both literally and figuratively) with them. The brothers would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported them from home. There was no way they could have made it without their companions and crew: Luke, Beth, James, Dave and ship captain Knut Westvig of Stella Polaris. Swimming through that mysterious vortex was an experience none of them would ever forget. As it turned out the margin between success and dreadful failure had been less than one minute, with the current suddenly turning a moment after they made it safely into the boat. In doing so, they became the first people to swim across the second biggest whirlpool in the world. Nevertheless, they made it to the other side, under the supervision of their loyal team. The brothers completed this swim in a frenetic 10-minute window, dodging ominous red jellyfish and contending with vagaries of bubbling pressure that threw them into meandering courses.
Within this frantic wash of currents the water can reach speeds of up to 22 knots ( 41 km/h 25 mph). The Saltstraumen swim was a rapid sprint across a 0.25km tidal split with the worlds fastest whirlpool funnelling up to 400,000,000 cubic metres of swirling seawater through a 3km long and 250-metre wide strait every six hours. In some ways they were prepared, in others they had absolutely no idea what to expect… They’d completed the Corryvreckan swim in twenty-two minutes. Fewer than one-hundred people have ever completed this swim (more people have been into space) and it is the only whirlpool that has ever been swum.
#Maelstrom norway full#
They’d also swum the full ninety-mile length of the River Eden for their Swim the Eden expedition that same year. Of course, the brothers already had a little whirlpool swimming experience, having swum the Corryvreckan (third largest whirlpool in the world) in July 2015. The very real prospect of a large black shape appearing beneath them was frightening to say the least, although it was important to remember that there are hitherto zero reported orca attacks on humans in the wild. Currents aside, they would also have to contend with the freezing cold water of the Arctic Circle, as well as over 600 killer whales rumoured to be roaming the region and the infamous lions mane jellyfish, capable of growing bigger than a human. They knew early on that this would be their greatest challenge yet and the biggest test of their brotherhood. No one had ever attempted either of these swims before, which meant the brothers were truly heading into uncharted waters. They are truly the stuff of literary legend. Made famous by Edgar Allan Poe’s A Descent into the Maelstrom, featured in the climax of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, when Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nebuchadnezzar, is sucked under the waves and also feared by Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Into the Maelstrom became a world first attempt to swim across the two biggest and most powerful whirlpools in the world: the mighty Moskstraumen and Saltstraumen in Norway. Swirling violently off the Norwegian coast, above the Arctic Circle, on the edge of the Lofoten Islands, these two vast whirlpools possess the strongest and fastest tidal currents in the world.
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