Lagarfljót Worm — Cryptid Encyclopedia

In the glacial waters of Lagarfljót, a narrow, 25-mile-long lake in eastern Iceland, something has been seen for nearly 700 years. The first recorded sighting dates to 1345, making the Lagarfljót Worm — Lagarfljótsormurinn in Icelandic — one of the oldest continuously reported lake cryptids in the world.

According to Icelandic folk tradition, a young girl placed a gold ring on a small serpent to make the gold grow. Instead, the serpent grew — explosively, terrifyingly — until it was too large and too dangerous to control. She threw both serpent and ring into the lake, where the creature continued to grow to enormous proportions, lurking in the depths and surfacing to portend disaster.

The worm is described as roughly 40 feet long or more, with a dark, serpentine body, multiple humps or coils, and a head that witnesses variously describe as snake-like or horse-like. It surfaces rarely, but when it does, the sighting is typically interpreted as an omen of bad events to come.

In 2012, a video captured by farmer Hjörtur Kjerúlf went viral, showing a long, serpentine shape moving through the icy water of Lagarfljót. The Icelandic government commissioned an investigation, and a thirteen-member "truth commission" concluded by a majority vote that the footage was genuine — meaning an official Icelandic government body formally acknowledged the possible existence of the worm. "The commission concludes that the video shows a living creature," the report stated.

Skeptics suggest the video shows a fishing net or a length of rope caught in the current. But the commission's finding — combined with nearly seven centuries of consistent reports — gives the Lagarfljót Worm a unique status among cryptids: a monster with something approaching official government recognition.