Sjøormer — The serpents in the deep lakes and fjords

In the deep water off Seljord, in Lake Mjøsa Lake Mjøsa × Otto Sinding, Landskap ved Mjøsa (1877), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design About this image ▸ Norway's largest lake — 369 km², 117 km long, up to 449 m deep — with Hamar, Gjøvik, and Lillehammer on its shores. Its serpent legend is among the oldest documented sjøorm traditions in Norway: the Hamarkrøniken, an anonymous 16th-century town chronicle, records a huge serpent off Helgøya, shot with a crossbow by one of the bishop's men, its stranded carcass burned. Olaus Magnus (1555) independently records a serpent seen in Mjøsa in 1522 as a portent of King Christian II's banishment. The lake also holds the søsterklokkene (sister bells) legend of Ringebu Stave Church — the votive bell that broke through the ice on its way to Christiania and sank; a later raising nearly succeeded, but the rope broke, and the bell is said to lie there still. On the trip Lake Mjøsa is the water of the reunion. The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) drive south down the Gudbrandsdalen on Day 5 to Lillehammer on the lake's shore, where the Ungdommene (the Youngsters) have already arrived a day ahead and spend Day 5 on Storgata and at the Olympic Park. Day 5 ends with the reunion dinner, and the reunited family spends Days 6–7 beside the lake — Øyer Church up the valley, old-town Storgata, and Maihaugen — before the drive south. Lake Mjøsa Also discussed in Stedssagn — local legends, told as warnings , and down the long western fjords lives the worst thing in the cold country: a black coil that surfaces under a fishing boat and is gone again before anyone can name it. Norwegians call them sjøormer — sea-worms — and they have been reported, in writing, since the fifteen-hundreds.

The descriptions never agree, which is half the fear. On one lake, in one century, one witness gives it a horse’s head with a mane down to the water, the next a dragon’s head, the next a black eel as long as a barn. Lake Seljord Seljord × Wood engraving after Morten Müller, Le Monde illustré (8 February 1873), via Gallica / Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ Village and municipality in Telemark, on lake Seljordsvatnet — a parish unusually rich in recorded folklore. The lake serpent, Seljordsormen, entered the written record in 1750, when Gunleik Andersson Verpe of Bø reported it overturned one of his boats; the priest Hans Jacob Wille described it in his 1786 Beskrivelse over Sillejords Præstegield. In 1989 the municipality took the serpent, gold on red, as its coat of arms; a sonar expedition in August 2000 found nothing it could identify. The medieval stone church (c. 1150–1180) carries the legend that seven huldra tails — invisible to a Christian eye — hang inside, fallen from huldra brides wed there. Magnus Brostrup Landstad, parish priest 1839–1848, and Olea Crøger gathered most of the ballads in Norske Folkeviser (1853) here. Seljord, Telemark Also discussed in Huldra — the girl in the forest with a secretÅsgårdsreien — the storm that rides through the winter sky in Telemark Telemark × August Cappelen, Skogtjern i nedre Telemark (1852), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design About this image ▸ Historic region and county in the inland-southern part of Norway, between the southeastern coast and the central Hardangervidda plateau. Home to Heddal Stave Church — the largest of the twenty-eight surviving Norwegian stave churches, standing nearly thirty metres tall — and to the heavy-water production facility at Vemork whose sabotage by Norwegian commandos in February 1943 disrupted the German atomic-weapons programme. The name Telemark also gives the world the modern ski-turn technique developed there in the nineteenth century. In the folklore record Telemark is the deepest vein of all — the landscape of the ballad collectors, the hardingfele legends, and the lake serpent of Seljord. Telemark Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverFossegrimen — the waterfall fiddler who teaches you to playTroll — the monsters of the mountainsUtburd — the unbaptized child that will not restÅsgårdsreien — the storm that rides through the winter skyHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secret has the most famous of them — the Seljordsormen, called Selma — with accounts reaching back to 1750, when something large struck a rowboat crossing the lake; more than a hundred sightings followed after 1900, clustered almost entirely in the tourist months. Lake Mjøsa, the largest in the country, has a serpent that lies on the surface like a thick black log until it moves.

Some of the oldest accounts read like official records, because they were. The parish priest Hans Jacob Wille wrote in 1786 that the Seljordsormen had once bitten a man on the toe at Lakshøl. The Hamarkrøniken says one of the bishop’s men shot a serpent that stranded out in Mjøsa, near Helgøya, with a crossbow in 1522, and the carcass was later burned. In August 1746 Lawrence de Ferry — the naval commander and pilot-master of Bergen Bergen × Photochrom print, General view from Fjeldveien, Bergen (c. 1890–1900), Library of Congress About this image ▸ Norway's western trading capital, founded around 1070 on the inner Byfjorden. For four centuries the largest city in the country and the wharf through which the entire western export economy ran — dried cod from the Lofoten fisheries, stockpiled and traded by the Hanseatic merchants at Bryggen from 1360 to 1754. Norway's commercial and intellectual heart through the Hanseatic period; overtaken in size by Christiania (Oslo) in the 1830s. The painted wooden Bryggen wharf is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and substantially what it was in the late seventeenth century. On the trip The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) reach Bergen late on Day 3 via the Norway-in-a-Nutshell train-and-ferry route from Oslo. On the Day 4 morning they walk Bryggen and ride the funicular up Mount Fløyen before flying back to Oslo and driving on to Lillehammer that evening — a day ahead of the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters), who spend the split days north in Trondheim and the heritage country of Stjørdal, Hegra, and Kylloplass and come south on Day 5. Bergen Also discussed in The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen WharfBefore There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayKraken — the island-sized beast, logged as factPesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmFossegrimen — the waterfall fiddler who teaches you to playAlcohol and Vinmonopolet — when and where to buy a drinkEveryday etiquette — quiet voices, wide space, no smilingFood and dining customs — having patience, free water, brunost on everything🚨 Emergencies - important numbers, hospitals, and what you can doLanguage basics — just enough Norwegian to be politeWhat to wear — the layering system, on the ground — fired his musket at a long horse-headed serpent off Molde and watched the water redden; two of his oarsmen swore to it afterwards in court at Bergen, and Bishop Erik Pontoppidan Erik Pontoppidan × Unknown artist, portrait of Erik Pontoppidan (first half of the 1700s) About this image ▸ Danish-Norwegian Lutheran theologian, bishop, and natural historian (1698–1764). Court preacher and personal chaplain to King Christian VI from 1735, who commissioned him to write the standard catechism that would accompany the new compulsory confirmation: Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed — Truth unto Godliness — published 1737 and the principal instrument of Norwegian Lutheran religious education for well over a century, into the late 1800s. Appointed Bishop of Bergen 1747; in that capacity wrote his two-volume Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie (1752–53), the standard eighteenth-century natural history of Norway and the work that first describes the kraken under that name. Later vice-chancellor of the University of Copenhagen. Also discussed in The Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedKraken — the island-sized beast, logged as fact filed the deposition in his 1753 Natural History of Norway The Natural History of Norway × Plate 27, Erik Pontoppidan, The Natural History of Norway (London, 1755), Biodiversity Heritage Library About this image ▸ Erik Pontoppidan's two-volume Det første Forsøg paa Norges naturlige Historie — the first attempt at a natural history of Norway — published in Copenhagen in 1752 and 1753 while its author held the bishopric of Bergen, and translated into English in London in 1755 as The Natural History of Norway. It catalogued the country's air, mountains, waters, plants, minerals, animals, birds, and fish — and, in the second volume, in the same sober register, its sea-creatures: the havmann, the sea serpent, and the first detailed printed description of the kraken, a beast said by witnesses to be mistaken for a chain of islands. Among the evidence stood the sworn Bergen court testimony of pilot-master Lawrence de Ferry, who fired on a serpent off Molde in August 1746. Also discussed in Kraken — the island-sized beast, logged as fact , between entries on seabirds and the weather.

The open ocean had its own version, scaled up — the kraken Pontoppidan catalogued in the same book, which turned out to be the giant squid.

The lake serpents were never resolved. In August 2000 a team led by Jan-Ove Sundberg lowered a trap baited with live fish into the lake and reported sonar contacts they could not identify; the net came up empty. By then the serpent had already been made official — Selma swims, gold on red, on the coat of arms Seljord adopted for itself in 1989.