Lakes in general and special the big, deep lakes have often appealed to humans curiosity and wondering, are there any sea serpent to find?
The earliest description of the sea serpent in Snåsavatnet is dated
from year 1770. A man called Gerard
Schøning describes the phenomenon in a traveling- letter. Also a priest with
the name Busk Brun talked about the sea serpent in the year 1817. The latest
description is from 1993. A man named Valdemar Østvik gave, in an interview to
a radio, a precise description of the sea serpent and how
someone tried to capture it outside Storsteinan
on the Urstadlandet.
He also told about a circus that was to show the sea serpent for the
first time to the local people. But it was in its cage washed over board from
the riverboat ”Bonden” and Valdemar meant that it had joined his friends in
Snåsavatnet. The director of education Bjarne Økland from Snåsa, is one of
the last persons that has seen the sea serpent. He is telling: A summer day from
a few years back, the lake had a beautiful blue shimmering surface. Somewhere
between Langnes and Sandnes
a long, big dark figure bend as a giant worm in the surface. He could see the
countor of the figure against the bright surface behind it.
The sea serpent do also has some friends in other lakes. The nearest one
is the Bigsea-animal (translated direct
into English from Swedish), in Østersund in Sweden. It is Østersunds brand and
the town has a museum connected to this sea serpent. In Norway we can find
the most known sea serpent in Seljord. It has been named Selma
and it is a big attraction there. But the most known sea serpent is Nessie
in Loch Ness. It may seem that our sea serpent has the same origin as
Nessie. If we take a good map and draw a line along the Snåsavatn and southwest
along Beistadfjord- Skaudalen , along
the North
Sea. Where do we end?
Precisely ,in longitude, over Loch
Ness. Those who have read about different geological periods, can
speculate about the possibilities that the sea serpents can have been captured
in a pocket under sea. Maybe something happened during the glacial period for
about 2-3 000 years ago. But no one has actually proved the existence of a sea
serpent. But to our comfort, when scientists are not able to explore all of the
bears or find and hunt down wolfs (we do that in Norway in these days. Can you
imagine that !!!!), so can't we
expect to explore sea serpents in the big lakes. The sea serpents in Snåsa has
been protected and no one are allowed to do anything towards it if someone
should run into it. We don't know if it's a male or a female, but we invite you
to suggest a name to it. Send a mail to Sem school.
If you want to explore the sea serpent we recommend a trip with our
riverboat called ”Bonden II”. To our partnerships schools; If you are
visiting us the have to look for it.
If you look at the picture you can wonder; is this really a sea serpent?
Take care everyone and sweet dreams!