Legendary Sea Monster Exists: Icelandic Government Commission Says

Ellen Lloyd - AncientPages.com - For a long time, Iceland's most famous lake monster named Lagarfljótsormurinn has been considered nothing but a myth.

However, according to some researchers, it would seem that this remarkable creature does, in fact, exist.

An excerpt from a map of Iceland by a Flemish cartographer shows sea monsters that some believed inhabited the surrounding waters. However, some speculation about this monster-riddled map is that it aimed to dissuade Europeans from moving to an island that the current settlers preferred to keep to themselves.
From Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis

In 2012 a video of what was claimed to be Iceland's most famous lake monster went viral, but it was quickly dismissed as a hoax. The video showed a long, serpentine form swimming in an eastern Iceland glacial river. The idea that a huge unknown creature is present in the lake shouldn't come as a surprise because several Icelandic folktales have long mentioned this serpent.

In their book "Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales," folklorists May and Hallberg Hallmundsson describe one origin tale of the beast: "At one time, long, long ago, there was a woman living on a farm in the Lagarfljót district, close by the stream where it broadens into a lake.
She had a grown daughter. Once, she gave her daughter a gold ring."

The woman instructed her daughter to catch a snake and keep the gold ring underneath it in her linen chest (as one apparently did long ago in rural Iceland).

She did so, "but when the girl went to look at her ring again, the snake had grown so large that the chest was beginning to come apart. Then the girl was frightened, and she picked up the chest with everything in it and threw it into the lake. A long time passed, and gradually people became aware that there was a serpent in the lake, for it was beginning to kill both people and animals crossing the waters."

Recently, a truth commission established in 2012 by the Fljótsdalshérað municipal council was given the task of examining whether the video displaying the serpent could be genuine. The results of the investigation are genuinely astonishing.
"I was told about the commission's conclusion, and I'd like to say that I'm extremely pleased to confirm that the majority of the commission was right," Hjörtur E. Kjerúlf, who shot the video, said.

According to Iceland Review, "the commission was given the task of determining whether a video of the alleged monster shot by Hjörtur E. Kjerúlf, which went viral, was authentic and whether he was entitled to a prize of ISK 500,000 (USD $4,300).

A shot of the sea monster from the video.

Hjörtur shot the footage through his kitchen window at farm Hrafnkelsstaðir in Fljótsdalur early one morning in February 2012. The video was initially posted on the website of national broadcaster RÚV and reposted multiple times after Iceland Review reported on it.

The video has now been watched approximately 8 million times and has prompted film crews from abroad to come to the lake in search of the serpent.

According to at least seven people out of 13 on the panel, the legendary monster officially exists. Considering the fact that our lakes and oceans are still vastly unexplored, it is difficult to say what kind of creatures of immense size inhabit the waters.

Updated on December 11, 2022

Written by - Ellen Lloyd AncientPages.com

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