_Mare Tenebrarum_ means "sea of darkness," the Atlantic.
96. 10-15. This is a real description of the geography of the region
of the Lofoden islands. Refer to a good map of Norway.
97. 27. Maelstr?¶m: from Norwegian words meaning "grind" and
"stream." The swift tidal currents and eddies of the Lofoden islands
are very dangerous, but the early accounts are greatly exaggerated,
and Poe's description is, aside from being based on these accounts,
purely imaginative.
97. 32. Jonas Ramus. Professor Woodberry, whose study of Poe's
text has been exhaustive, has an interesting note to this effect: Poe
used an article in an early edition of the Encyclop?¦dia Britannica, in
which a passage was taken from Pontoppidan's "The Natural History of
Norway" without acknowledgment, this in turn having been taken (with
proper acknowledgment) from Ramus. The Britannica, in the ninth
edition, after giving Poe credit for "erudition taken solely from a
previous edition of this very encyclopedia, which in its turn had
stolen the learning from another, quotes the parts that Poe invented
out of his own head." See "Whirlpool" in the Britannica.
98. 26-27. Norway mile: a little over four and a half English
miles.
99. 19. Phlegethon: a river of Hades in which flowed flames
instead of water.
100. 4. Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) was a learned Roman Catholic
writer, a native of Germany.
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