Location: Egilsstaðir, Austurland Region Map
Surface area: 53 km²
Lagarfljot Lake is situated near Egilsstaðir, Austurland Region in Iceland. This narrow long lake covers an area of 53 km² and stretches for 25 km. Lagarfljot Lake has only one inflow of Lagarfljot river. It is famous home for alleged aquatic monster that lives here. Local legends claim that a giant worm known locally as Lagarfljótsormur or Lagarfljot worm dwells in frigid waters of Lagarfljot Lake. The first reference to this cryptid date back to 1345. The sightings of this elusive creature continued to this day despite relatively few local citizens and tourists who come to this land. Yet many eye witnesses claim to have seen a giant serpent like animal move through the waters of the calm Lagarfljot Lake and in some instances even make it to shore. Some eye witnesses report seeing a coiled up creature lying motionless on the shores of the lake.
The creature is said to
live and its back is usually spotted out of the water in Lagarfljót,
a glacial freshwater lake below sea level that has poor visibility
thanks to clogging. It is described as longer than a bus, 39 ft (12
m), and has also been reported out of the water, lying coiled or
gliding in the trees. It is a monster with many humps, rather than a
serpentine type, such as the Loch Ness monster.
The
Lagarfljot worm has been sighted several times in modern times,
including in 1963 by the head of Iceland's National Forest Service,
Sigurður Blöndal, and in 1998 by a teacher and students from the
Hallormsstaðir School. In 1983, contractors who Installing telephone
wiring they sighted a large shifting mass near the east coast when
they made preliminary depth measurements and when they later removed
the non-functional cable, they found that it was broken where they
had seen the anomaly:
"This cable was specially designed not
to kink, it was twisted in several places and was broken and damaged
in 22 different places… I think we dragged the cable directly over
the belly of the beast. Unless it was through your mouth."
In February 2012, the Icelandic national
broadcaster RÚV published a video showing the worm swimming in the
icy water.This was later explained as a supposed inanimate object
moved by the fast current, as it was not moving through the water. A
truth commission reported in August 2014 that the opinion of the
members was divided as to when to the video, but they saw no reason
to doubt the existence of the creature, an expert later judged the
veracity of the video as genuine.
A tourist boat named
Lagarfljótsormurinn began operating on the lake in 1999, and the
Gunnar Gunnarsson institution in Skriduklaustur seeks to preserve
the tradition of the Lagarfljot worm for cultural and tourism
purposes.
The legend of the worm is mentioned for
the first time in the year 1345. The sightings were considered
harbingers of a great event such as a natural disaster.
According to popular folklore compiled by Jón Árnason, the great
Lagarfljot snake emerged from a small "lingworm" or thorny dragon;
her mother gave a girl a gold ring, and asked her how she could take
advantage of the gold in the ring, she told her to place it on top
of a lingworm. She did so, and put it on the creature's upper chest
for a few days, but then discovered that the little dragon had grown
so large that she had broken it. Scared, he threw both the creature
and the gold into the lake, where the snake continued to grow and
terrorized the countryside, spitting venom and killing people and
animals. Two Finns were called in to destroy it and retrieve the
gold, they said that they had managed to tie the head and tail of
the beast to the bottom of the lake but that it was impossible to
kill it because there was no larger dragon underneath.
Suggested explanations
Gases rising from the lake bed create
openings in the ice, floating debris from the bottom of the lake to
the surface, and sometimes warp the atmosphere, creating optical
illusions. Remnants of mountain slopes and glaciers accumulate and
can be seen as a kind of monster. According to Helgi Hallgrímsson, a
biologist from Iceland who has studied the lake extensively, he
indicates that these theories could explain some sightings, but not
all sightings, while traditional legendary material could explain
some of the stories.