Part 12
“They who, either to trade, or to fish, sail along the shores of Norway, relate with concurring evidence a truly admirable story, namely that a very large serpent of a length of upwards of 200 feet, and 20 feet in diameter lives in rocks and holes near the shore of Bergen; it comes out of its caverns only on summernights and in fine weather to devour calves, lambs and hogs, or goes into the sea to eat cuttles, lobsters and all kinds of sea-crabs. It has a row of hairs of two feet in length, hanging from the neck, sharp scales of a dark colour, and brilliant flaming eyes. It attacks boats, and snatches away the men, by raising itself high out of the water, and devours them: and commonly this does not happen without a terrible event in the Kingdom, without a change being at hand, either that the princes will die or will be banished, or that a war will soon break out.”
This narrative tells us that the sea-serpent frequents the shores of Norway, that it appears mostly in summer, that it has large dimensions, and a considerable thickness. It has a row of hairs hanging down from its neck, its colour is dark, its eyes are brilliant and flaming. It only appears in fine weather.
We consider its devouring hogs, lambs and calves, and its appearance on summernights on land to take its prey to be a fable. The eating of squids, cuttles, crabs and lobsters may be a fiction, or it may have been truly witnessed, the animal chewing them with its head above water, as seals and sea-lions do. The story of snatching away a man from the ships is evidently confounded with another tale, as it is not mentioned anywhere else with regard to the sea-serpent. It evidently refers to gigantic calamaries which occasionally attack boats and snatch away one of the crew. (See LEE, _Sea Monsters Unmasked_, I, _The Kraken_.). Its being covered with scales must be fictitious too, for they who saw a sea-serpent at a short distance, are unanimous in stating that it had no scales but a smooth skin.
On the same page of the text, OLAUS MAGNUS has figured a sea-serpent in the act of swallowing a man from a boat, which has just anchored on a rock, wherein the serpent has its hole. I give a facsimile of that figure in Fig. 14.--Mr. HENRY LEE who mostly sees calamaries and no other animals in the tales and figures representing the Great Sea-Serpent, tells us that: “the presumed body of the serpent was one of the arms of the squid, and the two rows of suckers thereto belonging are indicated in the illustration by the medial line traversing its whole length (intended to represent a dorsal fin) and the double row of transverse septa, one on each side of it”.--As to the snatching away a man of the crew, I quite agree with Mr. LEE, as already said above, but as to the figure of the serpent itself, I am strongly convinced that OLAUS MAGNUS or his draughtsman had no other intention than to delineate a large snake, and they gave it the large scales, mentioned in the text, but the scales are badly drawn. They further gave it a medial row of scales, as all snakes have such a medial row.
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GESNER in his _Nomenclator aquatilium animantium_, 1560, gives two figures of the sea-serpent of which I give facsimiles in Fig. 15 and 16.--GESNER says that there is a large map of Scandinavia in OLAUS MAGNUS’ work, and on this map our fig. 15 is drawn in the Baltic Sea, and our fig. 16 in the Atlantic Ocean. In the original edition of 1555 there is but a small map of Scandinavia, which shows only the heads of several animals in the sea. I therefore conclude that there still exists another edition of MAGNUS’ work which I don’t know. Returning to our figures we immediately observe that the drawer has delineated large _snakes_, the one without scales, and swimming with _vertical_ undulations, the other with large scales, and that he did not intend to represent a dorsal fin by the medial line, but only a medial row of scales, unequal to the lateral. On the head three transversal rows of protuberances are visible, which evidently serve to represent the long hairs hanging down from the neck of the animal.
Of the sea-serpent GESNER tells us:
“In the Baltic or Swedish Ocean are found certain yellow sea-serpents of thirty or forty feet in length, which, when not provoked, do not harm any one. Of these sea-serpents OLAUS MAGNUS gives the following figure in his Map of Scandinavia”.--(See our fig. 15).
“On the same Map there is another sea-serpent, a hundred or two hundred feet long (as says the text, or three hundred, as states the number added to the figure), which sometimes appears near Norway in fine weather, and is dangerous to Sea-men, as it snatches away men from the ships. Mariners tell that it incloses ships, as large as our trading vessels, made on our rivers and lakes, by laying itself round them in a circle, and that the ship then is turned upside down. It sometimes makes such large coils above the water, that a ship can go through one of them. I give the figure as it is on the Map.”--(See our fig. 16.)
Here we meet with three other characteristics of the sea-serpent: it is harmless when not provoked, it encircles ships and turns them upside down, and its coils are so gigantic that a ship can go through one of them. The first characteristic is a real one: the sea-serpent is perfectly harmless, if not provoked. We observe this in almost every account. The other two are of course extraordinary exaggerations of its dimensions.
The two figures of GESNER copied on a reduced scale, with an extract of his text, appeared in the _Graphic_ of January 29, 1876.
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The text in the edition of OLAUS MAGNUS’ work printed at Basle in 1567 is the same as that of the first edition printed in 1555 at Rome, but the figure between the text differs, and is doubtless a combination of our figg. 14 and 16, in miniature; see our fig. 17.
On the map of Scandinavia subjoined to the work also occurs a figure of the sea-serpent, which we have copied in our fig. 18.--This figure does not claim our attention; it represents an eel or a snake, it has no scales.--Not so fig. 17: it distinctly shows dorsal scales and ventral plates, just as snakes have. This seems to me a confirmation of my opinion that in all these figures the drawers had no other intention than to delineate a large snake, without any notion of the arms of a calamary. As to the seizing of a man, we believe that a large calamary was the robber, whose deed is wrongly attributed to the sea-serpent. Last not least, it distinctly shows the long hairs, hanging down from its neck, a true mane, and several credible persons declare to have seen them.
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ALDROVANDUS, 1640, believes that the sea-serpent of the Baltic or Swedish Ocean is the same as that of the Norwegian Ocean. I believe he is right. Moreover he repeats the texts of OLAUS MAGNUS and GESNER. His figures are enlargements of the figures on the Map of Scandinavia, which accompanies the edition of OLAUS MAGNUS’ work, unknown to me, and mentioned above. He only omits the water, the ship and the man in its mouth. Of his figures I don’t give copies, because they are exact enlargements of our fig. 15 and 16.--
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=2=.--1640?--(See ADAM OLEARIUS, _Gottorfische Kunstkammer_, Ed. I, 1650, Ed. II, 1674) “and that this is true has not long ago been confirmed by a Swedish nobleman at Gottorf, who declared to have heard from the Burgomaster of Malmoi, a trustworthy man, that, whilst standing on a hill on the Norwegian coast, he saw in the calm water a large serpent, which seen from afar, had the thickness of a wine barrel, and 25 windings. These serpents are said to appear on the surface of the water only in calm weather and at certain times.”
Here again we have the statement, that in the Norwegian sea, and most probably in the Sound between Sweden and Danmark, a large animal was seen, looking like a huge serpent, and the confirmation that it comes to the surface of the water only in calm weather and at certain times. I beg the reader to fix his attention on those apparently insignificant statements, as it will be seen that they are given several times independant of one another.
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JONSTON in his _Historia naturalis_, and his _Theatrum universale omnium animalium_ of which several editions appeared in 1653, 1657, 1660, 1665, 1718 (edited by RUYSCH, quoted by Prof. W. D. PECK in _Mem. Amer. Acad._ 1818, Vol. IV), 1764 and 1768, repeats the tales of OLAUS MAGNUS, and the figures of GESNER and ALDROVANDUS.--
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MILTON in his _Paradise Lost_, printed in 1667, comparing Satan with huge monsters, also mentions the sea-serpent of the Norwegians, calling it Leviathan (Book I, verse 192-208):
“Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, With head up-lift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blaz’d; his other parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size Titanian, or Earth-born, that war’d on Jove, Briareus, or Typhon, whom the den By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim th’ ocean stream: Him, haply slumb’ring on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night founder’d skiff Deeming some island, off, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.”
We observe that he mixes here also another story of a large sea-monster on which sea-men, believing it some island, will anchor, a story told about the Kraken and about the sperm-whales.
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CHARLETON in 1668 quotes only ALDROVANDUS and OLAUS MAGNUS, giving neither description nor figures.
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=3=.--1687.--(RAMUS, _Norges Beskrivelse_, quoted by PONTOPPIDAN).
“In the year 1687 a Great Sea-Serpent was seen several times by several persons in the Damsfjord, and once by eleven persons together. The weather was calm, but as soon as the sun set and the wind began to blow, it left the fjord, and like one who runs out a coil of rope can know the length thereof, so one could see how long it was, before it had wound off all its coils, and stretched itself at full length.”
In this account we read again that the animal is seen in calm weather and that it shows coils or windings. For the first time the fact is mentioned that it can stretch itself, evidently in a straight line. Further on we shall read this several times.
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=4=.--1720.--(PONTOPPIDAN, _Det förste Forsög paa Norges naturlige Historie_).
“THORLACK THORLACKSEN has told me that in 1720 a sea-serpent had been shut up a whole week in a little inlet, into which it came by high tide through a narrow entrance of seven or eight fathoms deep, and that eight days afterwards, when it had left the inlet, a skin of a snake or serpent was found. One end of the skin had entirely sunk into the water of the inlet, and no one could guess how long it was, the inlet in which the skin partly lay, being several fathoms deep. The other end of this skin was washed ashore by the current, where everybody could see it; apparently it could not be used, for it consisted of a soft, slimy mass. THORLACKSEN was a native of the harbour of Kobbervueg”.
It is evident that a true sea-serpent visited the little fjord daily during that week, most probably in its pursuit of fish, for the sea-serpent is sufficiently known to the Norwegians, and if it had been an animal different from the common Norwegian sea-serpent, I am sure that it would not have been called a sea-serpent. It is also stated that the animal left the inlet. But the skin found afterwards was certainly nothing else but a putrified long arm or tentacle of a great calamary. The soft slimy nature of the skin sufficiently proves my hypothesis. The great calamary died in the fjord or inlet, and its long dead arm was washed ashore by the current, while the body sunk.
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=5=.--1734, July 6.--The earliest account of HANS EGEDE’S encounter with the sea-serpent we find in his work published in Danish at Kopenhagen in 1740, entitled: “_A Full and Particular Relation of his voyage to Greenland, as a Missionary, in the year 1734_”.
I have not had the opportunity of consulting this work, but the passage about the sea-serpent runs most probably as follows:
“Anno 1734, July. On the 6th. appeared a very terrible sea-animal, which raised itself so high above the water, that its head reached above our main-top. It had a long sharp snout, and blew like a whale, had broad, large flappers, and the body was, as it were, covered with a hard skin, and it was very wrinkled and uneven on its skin; moreover on the lower part it was formed like a snake, and when it went under water again, it cast itself backwards and in so doing it raised its tail above the water, a whole ship-length from its body: That evening we had very bad weather.”
In the same year there appeared a German edition of this work, entitled _Ausführliche und Wahrhafte Nachricht vom Anfange und Fortgange der Groenländischen Mission_, etc., Hamburg, 1740, 4^o, which I have not been able to consult either.
I don’t know whether there is an English or a French edition. In the _Illustrated London News_ of Oct. 28, 1848, the writer of the article _Evidences of the former appearance of the Sea-Serpent_ translated the passage from a Danish copy of EGEDE’S _Full and Particular Relation_ in the British Museum. Evidently he was not very well up in the Danish language, for his translation is partly incorrect. I am convinced that in the original text EGEDE does not mention the exact locality where he saw the animal. The translator tells us that it was off the south coast of Greenland, which of course is incorrect, as Greenland has no south coast. Of “sea-animal” he makes “sea-monster”, for “above our main-top” he has “on a level with our main-top”, for “it blew like a whale” he has “it blew water almost like a whale”, for “its body was as it were covered with a hard skin” he has “its body was covered with shell-fish, or scales”, and some parts are not translated at all.
In 1738 HANS EGEDE wrote a _Journal of his mission_, in which he did not mention the meeting, but his son PAUL EGEDE in the continuation of this Journal, entitled _Continuation af Relationerne betreffende den Groenlandske Mission_, Kjoebenhavn, 1741, gives a full account of it, which we have translated above word for word.
I have not had the means of consulting the German translation of this work, entitled _Fortgesetzte Relationen die Groenländische_ _Mission betreffend_, Kopenhagen, 1741, so I cannot say anything about the text or figures, but the translation which I found in the German edition of PONTOPPIDAN’S _Natural History of Norway_ is correct. Not so the English translation entitled _Journal of the Mission to Greenland_, 2d. Vol. There we find, according to Mr. LEE who quotes the passage in his _Sea-Monsters Unmasked_, first _sea-monster_ instead of _sea-animal_, further, that _it spouted water like a whale_, instead of _it blew like a whale_. There is a great difference between these two expressions. A whale does not spout _water_ as is generally believed and figured. Further, that the body seemed to be covered _with scales_, instead of _with a hard skin_ or _crust_, for the Danish _skiell_ or _skiaell_ is singular, and not plural. Finally, that the tail above the water was a whole ship-length from the _head_ instead of from the _body_, for the Danish _Kroppen_ signifies “the body”. Of course I cannot say anything of the figures in this edition.
In the original Danish work of PAUL EGEDE there is a map of a part of the coast of Greenland and of the Davis’ Straits, called Baals Rivier, on which is situated the Danish Colony, the Good Hope (Gothaab). As it was generally done in those days, Mr. BING, a brother-missionary of EGEDE’S, drew on his map not only the animal but also the vessel in the sea. I give here a facsimile of the figure of the animal, without the ship. We distinctly see that the animal has rather a serpentlike form with a large head, showing formidable teeth, an eye with a heavy eye-brow, and a nostril; two flappers on the fore-part of the body, the uneven skin, and a tail ending in a point.
On the same map there is also another figure, showing the animal’s tail, after it had plunged back into the water. The tail is again figured terminating in a point.
We shall do well to observe the fact that the figure is an accurate illustration of the text with regard to the animal blowing like a whale; the breath which the animal exhales immediately after having been under water a long time, is condensed in the cold air and forms little curling clouds.
In the original Danish work of HANS EGEDE, entitled _A Full and Particular Relation_, etc., of which we have spoken above, there is also a figure. Though I have not had the opportunity to consult this work, I am thoroughly convinced, that the map of Baals Rivier with the two figures of the animal are quite the same, true facsimiles. The above mentioned translator drew this figure on a reduced scale for his article in the _Illustrated London News_, and as his text is incorrect, his figure is so too, for he changed the rough skin into scales, according to his own translation. (See our fig. 21.)
Afterwards Mr. LEE in his _Sea-Monsters Unmasked_ made use of the figure of the _Illustrated London News_ and so gave his readers again an altered figure. For history’s sake I show here a true facsimile of the figure as it appeared in the _Illustrated London News_, Oct. 28, 1848, and in Mr. LEE’S _Sea Monsters Unmasked_, London, 1883. A reduced copy of it also appeared in the _Illustrirte Zeitung_ of February 3, 1877.
In the Danish work of HANS EGEDE _Det gamle Groenlands nye Perlustration_ we read: “that it was seen at 64° lat. before the colony”. “Its body was as thick as the ship and three or four times longer”. Moreover the description of the animal is the same as in PAUL EGEDE’S _Continuation_ of the Journal.
In the German edition of this work, entitled _Des alten Groenlands neue Perlustration_, Copenhagen, 1742, we read: “that it was seen before the Danish Colony, the Good Hope, that it had two broad flappers on the fore-part of the body”.
In the Dutch edition, entitled: _Beschrijving van Oud Groenland_, Delft, 1746, the translator did not allow himself so many liberties as the English and the German translators did, but was more correct in his expressions.
In the French edition, entitled _Description et histoire naturelle du Groenland_, Copenhagen et Genève, 1763, the translator allowed himself the liberty to tell his readers that “when the animal, which was covered _with scales_, plunged back into the water, it did so with _the belly turned upwards_!”
In the same year appeared a second German edition (translated from the French) entitled _Beschreibung und Naturgeschichte von Groenland_, Berlin, 1763, in which we even read that the animal _lay upon the water with its belly turned upwards_ when it plunged back into the water!
In many respects the figure of Mr. BING and EGEDE’S text complete each other.
Let us now have a look at both the text and the figures. We may do this most safely, being convinced of the truth of EGEDE’S words and BING’S figure. EGEDE “was a truthful, pious, and single-minded man, possessing considerable powers of observation, and a genuine love of natural history; his statements are modest, accurate, and free from exaggeration. His illustrations bear the unmistakable signs of fidelity.” (LEE, _Sea-Monsters Unmasked_, p. 65.)