English 'maelstrom' from Dutch 'maelstrom' (grinding-stream), from 'malen' (to grind) + 'stroom' (stream) — named after a Norwegian tidal current.
A powerful whirlpool; a situation or state of confused movement or turbulent conflict.
From Dutch 'maelstrom' (whirlpool), from 'malen' (to grind, to whirl) + 'stroom' (stream, current). Literally 'grinding-stream.' The 'malen' component comes from Proto-Germanic *malaną (to grind), from PIE *melh₂- (to grind, to crush), the same root that gives English 'mill,' Latin 'mola' (millstone), and Greek 'myle' (mill). The word was popularized by its appearance on Flemish and Dutch cartographic maps labeling the Moskstraumen — a powerful tidal current off the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway that generates whirlpools up to 40 metres in diameter. Edgar Allan Poe's story 'A Descent into the Maelström' (1841) locked the word into the English
The original Maelstrom (Moskstraumen) is a real tidal current system off the coast of Norway, between Moskenesøya and Værøy in the Lofoten Islands. While dangerous to small boats, it is not the ship-swallowing vortex described in legend. Edgar Allan Poe's 'A Descent into the Maelström' (1841) and Jules Verne's 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea