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The
Seljord Orm |
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The
Seljord Orm |
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When I visited Torje Lindstøl at
Seljord, he showed me what at first looked like a tiny "sea serpent baby". It
was a 25 - 27 cm long model made to represent the Seljord orm. If was a
gift from a friend of his, the retired medical doctor Alf
Bjørn Aanonsen living in Porsgrunn. Aanonsen was born and raised in Seljord and
grew up listening to stories about the Seljord orm. He has kindly given me permission
to use pictures of his unique sea serpent model.
At Seljord a neighbour woman from his childhood, Bergit Haugerud once told his mother about her encounter with the animal. All her life Bergit habitually used to put fishing nets in the lake to help getting food on the table. Once again she rowed out to see to her nets, but this time she did not really get what she expected to. Next to the boat a long neck with a mane rose out of the dark water. It had a large head that looked like something between a moose`s head and a horse`s head. Bergit obviously was extremely frightened by this incident, because she never again put her fishing nets in the lake.
Aanonsen´s model depicted below is based on years of knowledge about the strange animal, from Bergit`s story, and from other neighbours who saw it at close range, like the captain of Fjøllguten I. The model reveals Dr. Aanonsen`s solid knowledge of anatomy. The model has got a navel, as Aanonsen is convinced that the Seljord animal is a mammal, not a fish.|
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The Aanonsen sea serpent: Click the orm and see it come "alive" ! |
Torje`s sketches (see another page) of the neck and the head have great similarities with witness documentations from Loch Ness, where the head of the animal is described as a camel´s head, a horse´s head, a calf´s head or a sheep´s head. In Mjoesa as well as from the rest of Norway we have the same comparisons, namely - horse´s head, cow´s head and calf´s head.
When I look at this weird sea serpent model I remember the photo and a sketch of a partly digested skeleton of an unknown creature lying on top of some fish crates in British Columbia in 1937. It was found in a whale´s stomack on a whaling station at Queen Charlotte Island. That head looks very much like a caricature of a camel/moose/horse´s head, as does the head of this tiny model. The British Columbia variety is called CADDY.
