Lagarfljót — the worm

OVERVIEW

Lagarfljót is a long, narrow, glacier-fed lake in the east of Iceland, beside the town of Egilsstaðir. The water is silt-laden and almost opaque, which is part of why it has kept its reputation. The Lagarfljótsormur — worm, meaning serpent or dragon — is the creature said to live in it, and is the oldest continuously reported lake monster in Europe.

HISTORY

The first sighting is generally taken to be the marvel seen at Lagarfljót in 1345, entered in the medieval Icelandic annals. The skrýmsli was reported again in 1749–50. The folk explanation, published in Jón Árnason's great collection of Icelandic folktales in 1862, is that a girl was given a ring and told to put a heath-worm — a slug — on gold to make the gold grow; the worm grew instead, until it had to be thrown into the lake, where it kept growing. Similar heath-worm stories attach to other Icelandic waters: at Skorradalsvatn, Sabine Baring-Gould collected an account in 1862 of a monster with a seal-like head.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Sightings have continued through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In February 2012 the farmer Hjörtur Kjerúlf filmed something moving in the ice-bound river; the video went round the world. In 2014 a 'truth committee' appointed by the municipality of Fljótsdalshérað voted that the footage showed the Lagarfljót worm — a formal local-government finding, and an unusual document to have. Scientists who examined the video have argued it shows a fishing net frozen into ice and moving with the current.

VISITING

The lake runs beside Route 931 and is visible from Egilsstaðir. Hallormsstaður forest and the Hengifoss path are on its eastern shore. No restriction.