Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.05.2008, Blaðsíða 28

28 | Reykjavík Grapevine | Issue 05 2008 | Article
MULDER: A prehistoric animal living in a lake is
not without precedence. Last August they pulled a
Bull shark from Lake Onaga in Massachusetts.
FARRADAY: An anomaly. Which proves nothing.
It only serves as fodder for pseudo-scientists with
nothing better to do than chase fairy tales.
MULDER: It’s been reported for centuries in doz-
ens of countries. From the monster in Loch Ness,
Nessie, to the Ogopogo in Lake Okanagan.
SCULLY: And Lake Champlain, Lagarfljót, Iceland...
From The X-Files, episode 3x22 - Quagmire
(1996)
Like most small towns in Iceland, Fellabær (pop.
350) seems to be little more than a random collec-
tion of houses surrounding a gas station. The vil-
lage lies on the banks of lake Lagarfljót in East-Ice-
land and, with the neighbouring town Egilsstaðir,
it was built primarily as a retail and service centre
for the farms in the area, back when farming was
still considered a viable career choice. I lived there
for the better part of my childhood, and when I
was seven-years old I encountered the local mon-
ster, a terrifying serpent-like beast that lives in
the lake. I was scared shitless, but I escaped un-
harmed. Last month, I returned for some serious
journalistic research on the beast, and preferably
to get a photo. I partially succeeded.
The Lagarfljót Worm
The first sighting of the monster, or The Worm as
the locals know it, was reported in 1345. There are
numerous sightings recorded since, many of them
in the 20th century and mostly by people who
have generally proven to be reliable. And sober. In
1963, Sigurður Blöndal, head of the National For-
rest Service, witnessed a long streak that moved
along the water, rising and falling above the wa-
ter level. As a man of science, he has never been
able to fully explain what it was he saw. In 1998, a
group of students and a teacher in Hallormsstaðir
School, located along the river, witnessed a simi-
lar mysterious stationery long snake-like streak in
the river. The sighting lasted for over ten minutes.
According to most accounts, the monster re-
sembles other known lake monsters, such as
the Ogopogo in Canada, and the Champ in Lake
Champlain, NY. It is described as a long, worm-
like creature. As a cryptid 1, it would likely be clas-
sified as a lake monster of the ‘many humps’ vari-
ety, rather than a ‘long neck’ type like the Loch
Ness monster, which more resembles a swimming
brachiosaurus. The ‘many hump’ characteristical-
ly arches its body in a series of humps above the
water level, hence the name. Some stories claim
The Worm is capable of blowing poisonous fumes
and wrecking death and havoc at a whim. Other
stories claim that the beast stretches from one end
of the lake to the other, full 30 km in length. The
monster appears in annals regularly, and is usu-
ally considered to foreshadow great misfortunes
or natural disasters, such as earthquakes, or vol-
canic eruptions. Some truly bad stuff. But how did
it all start?
The Myth
Lagarfljót is glacial river that runs 140 km from
Eyjabakkajökull – one of surging outlet glaciers
of Vatnajökull – to the Atlantic Ocean towards
the northeast. The river water used to be opaque
whitish-green resulting from the glacial flour
the river carries, but recent damming develop-
ments at the river’s base have resulted in a more
brownish hue. On its way to the ocean, the river
becomes placid and forms a 53 squarekilometres
lake 2, also known as Lögurinn. This is where the
beast is believed to live.
The legend of the Lagarfljót monster is a
common one, known around the world in various
versions. In its essence, it is the old fairytale about
the dragon protecting the gold. As the story goes,
a young girl living at a farm by the lake received
a gold ring as a gift from her mother. She asked
what she should do with the ring, and her mother
told her to place it in a chest underneath a worm
(in some versions it is a slug), and then the gold
would grow with the worm. When she checked on
the gold a few days later, the worm had grown so
much that the chest could barely contain it any-
more. Frightened by the sight of the giant worm,
she grabbed the chest and hurled it into the lake,
where the worm kept on growing.
The Worm soon became a menace that ter-
rorized the region. Helpless against the beast, the
farmers in the area called on the help of two Finns
(Saami shamans) to contain the beast with spells
and witchcraft. The Finns battled the Worm in the
lake for a long time. When they emerged, they
said they could not overpower the beast, but that
they had managed to tie its head and its tail to the
bottom, where the worm would stay bound to the
end of days, incapable of harming anyone.
Both of these legends are common urban
myths that have been retold in different versions
around the world at different times. It is easy to
trace the origin of these stories to mythological
figures, whether it is Sigurd the Volsung fighting
the dragon Fáfnir, retold in Wagner’s Niebelungen
Ring; the mighty Thor fighting the Midgard Ser-
pent; or Beowulf fighting the sea monster.
22 – The Number of the Beast
In 1983, contractor Valdimar Benediktsson led a
group of men assigned to furrow telephone cables
in the ground in East-Iceland. When the farms on
one side of Lagarfljót were done, the cable had
to cross the river to continue on the other side. A
specially strengthened cable had been ordered
for this task, wrapped in a thick hose made of
steel wire and engineered so that it wouldn’t wind
or kink, but lie straight on the bottom of the lake
from one bank to the other.
“When we initially went out on the lake to
perform depth measurements, we noticed a mys-
terious mass that was lying under a hollow bank
at considerable depth on the eastern side of the
lake. The mass seemed to be organic and moved
around as we performed the measurements,”
Benediktsson explains when we meet him in his
giant machine shop in Egilsstaðir.
1 Cryptozoology is the scientific study of, and search for, cryp-
tids – animals that fall outside of contemporary zoological
catalogs. This also includes animals that fall outside of the
taxonomic records due to a lack of empirical evidence, but
for which anecdotal evidence exists in the form of myths,
legends, or undocumented sightings, such as the Loch Ness
monster and the Bigfoot. Some people believe it to be a
pseudo-science.
2 Which, coincidence or not, is almost exactly the same area
that the Loch Ness lake covers, at 56.4 km2. Due to their
depth, the bottom of both lakes are also considerably below
sea level.
Chasing Monsters in East-Iceland
“There are sightings that
cannot fully be explained
by reason,” Hallgrímsson
contends. “My opinion is
that these are paranor-
mal activities, much like
people who claim to see
ghosts, elves and hid-
den people. That is why
some sightings can’t be
explained, and why only
some people can see the
Worm. As a scientist, I
have at least not been
able to fully explain this”