Gloomth

Light shone into dark corners, then, is something we can look forward to from this city's museums--leaving room, one trusts, for a bit of that atmospheric, gothic gloomth that Bruges does so well.

Since the suffix -th ceased to be productive after the Middle English period, Walpole's coinages greenth, blueth and gloomth clearly display "non-productive creativity" in the sense of Bauer (2001: 64).

There's also the pure Gothic of the scenes in Dracula's Transylvanian castle, saturated with cobwebs, dark shadows and general gloomth (a term coined by Horace Walpole, the great pioneer of Gothic culture), but it's the lively depiction of Whitby (where Stoker plotted part of the novel) that won my heart.

(Norway did not have its own art academy, let alone a national gallery.) Norway had been partially recorded topographically and a few intrepid Danish artists had undertaken minor painting tours, but despite the 18th century's fascination with Alpinism and 'gothick gloomth', Norway's vertiginous peaks and thundering torrents remained undiscovered by the European Romantic movement, and unpainted.

The 'gloomth' (a Walpolian term) of the hall and staircase was recreated around a figure of an angel from late-15th-century France and an exquisite suite of parade armour, recently discovered in a German collection, that originally took pride of place in a specially designed niche on the staircase.