Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.06.2014, Blaðsíða 6

6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2011
News | Not Fake
6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07 — 2014
Although there are a number of varia-
tions on the legend, the basic story goes
that ‘The Worm’—now an immense
serpent-like beast—was once just a
normal worm-size worm. A young girl
who lived in the area received a gold
ring from her moth-
er, and was told to
secret it away in a
chest with a worm
(sometimes a slug,
sometimes a snake)
for protection. Then,
she was told, the
worm and the gold
would grow togeth-
er. But the worm
grew much too big,
much too fast, and
the frightened child
pitched the chest,
beastie and all, into
Lake Lagarfljót.
This apparently suit-
ed The Worm just
fine, as it just kept on
growing.
Now gigantic
and quite hungry,
The Worm quickly
became a problem for locals, devour-
ing anyone who tried to cross the water
and occasionally even slinking ashore
and spitting its horrible poison about.
So several magicians (generally said
to be Sami mystics) were called in to
destroy the beast in exchange for the
monster’s gold if they were successful.
Unfortunately, the magicians were un-
able to kill The Worm, but they were
able to restrain its head and tail on the
bottom of the lake so that it would nev-
er rise again. But every now and then
humps of the monster’s back can be
seen undulating over the surface of the
water, sightings of which are said to be
bad omens.
The Worm Resurfaces
That’s the legend, and you’d be hard-
pressed to find
many who would
recite that tale as
a strictly factual
account. Never-
theless, sightings
of The Worm date
back as far as 1345
and, as a former
Grapeviner/resi-
dent of the area
once noted, “nu-
merous sightings
[have been] re-
corded since, many
of them in the 20th
century and mostly
by people who have
generally proven
to be reliable. And
sober.” In fact,
sightings of The
Worm have been
so common that
in 1997, the surrounding municipality
of Fljótsdalshérað decided to host an
open competition, offering 500,000
ISK (roughly 4,400 USD) to anyone
who came forward with irrefutable
evidence of the creature.
The competition generated a lot
of interest and garnered a number of
submissions—photographs and even
several original paintings. But none
of these passed muster as ‘irrefutable
evidence’ and eventually the competi-
tion was all but forgotten and the prize
was left unclaimed.
Fast forward then fifteen years to
a February morning in 2012, when a
farmer named Hjörtur Kjerúlf stood at
his kitchen window and filmed (what
appeared to be) The Worm slithering
through ice floes along the surface of the
lake. This thirty-second home video got
two and a half million views within days
of being posted to YouTube (nearly five
million today), made international head-
lines from Japan to the UK, and brought
news crews, monster hunters and myth-
debunking types from Russia and The
US among others.
It was around this time that a neigh-
bour recalled the bygone competition and
suggested that Hjörtur submit his video
for consideration. “He sent an official let-
ter to us,” recalls Stefán Bogi Sveinsson,
the president of the Fljótsdalshérað town
council. “Here is the video. So…I’d like to
have my prize money now.”
The Committee
Assembles
This was a bit of an unexpected wrinkle
for the town council—for one, that prize
money hadn’t just been waiting pa-
tiently in a safe for 15 years. Moreover,
after hearing that Hjörtur’s video had
been submitted as evidence, two other
people came forward with photographs
that they wanted considered as well. But
rather than try to deflect these claims,
the council decided to embrace them—to
reopen the competition but this time, to
do it with a little more flair. “We decided
to make it quite grand,” Stefán explains.
“To set it up quite scientifically.”
Thus was born the Sannleiksne-
fnd um tilvist Lagarfljótsormsins, or
the Truth Committee on the Existence
of the Worm of Lagarfljót, a thirteen-
member board of illustrious volunteers
including several town councilmembers,
an environmentalist and photographer, a
tourism promoter, a landscape architect
and forestry professional, a biologist,
an ethnologist, a pastor, and a former
member of parliament. There’s also a
self-described “Worm enthusiast,” a spe-
cialist in “mysterious phenomena,” and
the chairman of the Félags áhugmanna
um skrímslasetur, or the Association of
Amateur Monster Researchers.
There seem to have been more than
enough willing volunteers to estab-
lish the Truth Committee, but all the
same, many members—as locals who
have grown up with this story—have
had their doubts about the existence of
the creature. “It’s difficult to live with
this legend,” Stefán says. “It’s not really
something you like to admit you believe
in, but you don’t want to slam the door on
it, either.”
Moreover, it was very important that
the playful ceremony surrounding the
committee not be misinterpreted as irony
or mockery. “People around here have
seen it,” Stefán says. “Quite a lot of peo-
ple. So when we formed the committee,
the resolution at the town council meet-
ing had to state for the record that we had
no reason to doubt the existence of The
Worm. Officially, we don’t not believe.”
The committee was given the rest of
the municipal term—until June 2014—
to review the submissions and come to
a conclusion about their validity. “Of
course, time passes,” Stefán says, noting
that suddenly their deadline was in sight,
but no real “end game” had been estab-
lished. But announcing their findings at
a regular town meeting seemed a little
anticlimactic, everyone agreed, so they
decided to request an official extension
on the life of the committee so that they
might “end it properly” at the Ormsteiti,
or aptly named “Worm Party”—the mu-
nicipality’s summer festival, held annu-
ally in August.
The Truth Will Out
The Truth Committee didn’t have any
trouble getting the town council to ap-
prove its three-month extension, al-
though Stefán notes that one council
member did go on record saying that she
didn't think that a Truth Committee was
really necessary. “Her father saw the
worm, and she is convinced that it ex-
ists,” Stefán says. “So she doesn’t under-
stand why we needed to do this.”
Still, the question of how exactly the
committee will go about verifying Hjör-
tur’s video, or the other two photos, re-
mains. “To be quite frank,” Stefán says,
“we don’t really know.” But however the
evidence is assessed, the committee will
put the matter to a vote and the winner
(or winners, as the case may be) will be
announced at the Worm Party in August.
Stefán says that locals have gotten into
the spirit of the competition and think
of the final announcement as something
to look forward to. All the same, many
members of the community are of the
mind that the competition results are a
bit of a foregone conclusion. “Almost ev-
eryone has seen the video, although not
as many know about the photographs,”
Stefán says. “They say, ‘it’s obvious you
have the evidence—just give him [Hjör-
tur] the cash prize.’ But as a committee,
we have to be thorough.”
The Truth
Is Out There
The Truth Committee
reviews proof of Iceland’s
legendary Lake Worm
Words by Larissa Kyzer
Photo by Barbara Gancarek-Sliwinska
Amidst municipal election projections, heated whaling
debates, and a run of contentious labour strikes, an alto-
gether different kind of story made headlines last month
when East Iceland’s solemnly titled ‘Truth Committee'
announced that it needed more time to complete its tar-
get objective. Namely, to review submissions from people
claiming proof of the existence of the Lagarfljót Worm—
Iceland’s (slightly less formidable) answer to the Loch
Ness Monster. But in mid-May, just over two years since
its establishment, the committee announced that its work
was not complete and officially requested that the govern-
ing town council grant it just a few more months to com-
plete its investigation.
Lagarfljót lake is located in East
Iceland. It is 53 km at its widest
point and 25 km at its deepest.
Sightings of the Lagarfljót Worm
date back as far as 1345, and in
2012, farmer Hjörtur Kjerúlf
filmed it from his kitchen window.
For more about the legends sur-
rounding the Lagarfljót Worm,
check out Sveinn Birkir Björns-
son’s 2008 Grapevine article
“Chasing Monsters in East Ice-
land” online.
INFO
´ ´
With the municipal
elections on June
1, many politicians
scrambled at the
end of May to tilt
public approval in
their favour, even if it meant appealing
to some voters’ worst tendencies. Five
days before the elections, polls showed
that the Progressive Party was not
predicted to earn a seat on the city
council. But following Sveinbjörg
Birna Sveinbjörnsdóttir’s state-
ment that if she were elected she’d
revoke the plot of land intended for
Reykjavík’s first mosque, party sup-
port rose from 5.3% to 6.8%—which
would be just enough for the Progres-
sives to get that seat, and they actually
wound up getting two. (See page 8 for
more on the elections.)
As it happened,
voter turnout was
at a record low for
the election, with
just under 63% of
those eligible cast-
ing their ballots in Reykjavík. As pre-
dicted, the Social Democrats—led by
Reykjavík’s soon-to-be mayor Da-
gur B. Eggertsson—won the largest
share of the vote (31.9%), earning
them five seats on the city council.
The Social Dems will likely form a four-
way coalition with Bright Future (two
seats), the Left-Greens (one seat), and
the Pirates (one seat).
Following the election, Jón Gnarr re-
marked that he was worried
that results were evidence of
disturbing nationalism and xeno-
phobia. “We have seen this movement
become more powerful in Europe, with
a great deal of fear and suspicion of
foreigners,” he said. “This has shocked
me and I find it tedious. I would find it
awful if Icelanders went in the same di-
rection. It would make me ashamed as
an Icelander." (See page 10 for more.)
Although clearly, issues related to the
rights and treatment of foreign-
ers are far from being resolved
here, but some positive changes might
finally be afoot. At the end of May,
parliament approved a series of
significant changes to how asy-
lum applications will be handled
in Iceland. For one, a three-person
committee will be appointed to review
asylum applications instead of these
being handled by the Directorate of
Immigration or the Ministry of the In-
terior. The committee will be appointed
for five years, and two of the appointed
members will be from Iceland’s Human
Rights Office. These changes come at
a particularly good time: Iceland has
just agreed to accept refugees
fleeing the crisis in Syria—particu-
larly injured and ill children and their
families.
At the national level, many are
hopeful that the Progressive
Party’s Household Debt Relief pack-
age will bring some positive relief for
homeowners struggling with mort-
gage debt. The Household Debt
Relief package went into effect
this month, allowing individuals to
access their own tax-free, private pen-
sion holdings in order to pay down up
to four million ISK in debt. People can
apply for these debt write-offs via the
Icelandic/English website leiðrétting.is
until September 1.
Continues over
By Larissa Kyzer
NEWS IN BRIEF
EARLY MAY