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The Loen sea serpent |
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The Loen sea serpent |
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| Time: 1995, July
18th, 5.25 p.m. In August 2000 I received a phone call from Gunnar; he had seen me in the HD newspaper coverage. He wanted to tell me about an extraordinary event from the beautiful Loen lake where he and his family spends his summer vacations. The narrow Loen lake only 51 m above sea level, is12 km long and 1 km wide. The outlet is close to the sea. The lake is at the north end of the Jostedalen glacier, and it is emerald green of colour. This early afternoon Gunnar was out alone fishing in the outlet of the Hoggrenning river. He had already caught three nice trouts. The surface of the lake was quite calm, and no boat was in sight. Suddenly he saw that the calm surface broke into powerful waves and waterspouts. Three humps lined up in a row emerged in the middle of these waves. The humps were a little darker than the water. Gunnar regeretted that he did not own a video camera to document what happened, but he had brought his set of binoculars. From the shore he was now able to watch every detail in what followed, trout fishing completely forgotten.
He estimated the length of each of the three humps to be about 1,5 m long, but only 1/4 m high. The distance between each humps was 4 - 5 m. Each hump was evenly rounded. The set of humps moved like the three humps belonged to the same creature. 4 - 5 m behind the rear hump he noticed water beeing thrown 1,5 m high in air when the three humps took off at "motor boat speed". The the creature slowed down to a walking speed with no water splashing at all. It came to a complete halt, and stayed there for a while. Then it rushed off again. This procedure was repeated three or four times. During 30 - 40 minutes he was able to study this strange swimming behaviour of the creature. It seemed to move along a curved 150 m long course before it finally sank down and was gone. Gunnar estimated the length of the creature to be 25 - 30 m. Later that day he told his unique story to a local journalist and said that the length could have been 20 m. "I did that", he told me, " for fear of being accused of exaggerating." One week later at the camp. He and his family together with friends saw a wave phenomena. Water was suddenly shot 1,5 m high followed by a wave that spread out. It was so powerful that it would have capsized a rowing boat. He told me that this may have had a natural cause. After the special event of July 18th Gunnar talked to people whenever he saw an opportunity. Local people told of disappearing fishing nets and big holes in nets. One man he met told him that he many a time had studied the animal through his 50X telescope when the animal was basking in the surface. Strange waves are commonly observed. Gunnar also met other tourists who admitted that they had seen it swimming in the surface. Gunnar Sveen insists in calling the creature Loonie.
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