Per Krohg of Norway and Paris

Abstract

LYING OFF THE north-west coast of Norway in the great province of Nordland, the Lofoten Islands are known for their cod fisheries, which form an important part of the national wealth, and for the paintings of Per Krohg. As early as 1870, Jonas Lie the Elder, in Den Fremsynte, graphically described the storms which sweep in from the sea and make these granite and gneissic rocks, with their long line of jagged and fantastic peaks, a place of sudden death. Thirty years before Lie the Lofoten had entered literature in Poe's superb description of the great whirlpool which occurs off the south end of Moskenaes Island. A Descent Into the Maelström was first published in 1841, at which time readers of Graham's Magazine were inclined to wonder whether they, like the author, had been taken in by a tall tale of the sea, or if Poe, on one of his mysterious voyages had actually touched Lofoten and seen with his own eyes the swirling hell of which he wrote. The Maelström of Per Krohg was not painted until nearly a century after Poe's story appeared in print. In the meantime the Islands had returned to a cod-encumbered oblivion, there to await the day when a son of Norway should celebrate “those ramparts of the world” which had so stirred the febrile fancy of a writer in Philadelphia.