Men also occasionally deceive themselves, and while honestly believing that they have seen his oceanic majesty, produce a story which, on analysis, crumbles into atoms and crowns him with disgrace as an impostor.
The hard logic of science, in the hand of one of our master minds, has also been arrayed against him, but fortunately weighs rather against special avatars than against his existence absolutely.
Finally, the narratives of different observers disagree so much in detail that we have a difficulty in reconciling them, except upon the supposition that they relate to several distinct creatures, a supposition which I shall hope to show is not improbable, as well as that the term sea-serpent is an unwarranted specific differentiation of that of sea-monster, the various creatures collectively so designated being neither serpents nor, indeed, always mutually related. In commencing my record, I must bear in mind Mrs. Glasse’s proverbially excellent advice, and admit that it is simply a history of the various appearances of a creature or creatures too fugitive to admit of specific examination, and that until, by some remarkable stroke of fortune, specimens are secured, their zoological status must remain an unsolved, although closely guessed at, problem.
I have elsewhere stated my conviction that the serpent Midgard is only a corruption of accounts of the sea-serpent handed down from times when a supernatural existence was attributed to it; and we have in the Sagas probably the earliest references to it, unless, perhaps, the serpents mentioned by Aristotle, which attacked and overset the galleys off the Libyan coast, may have been of this species.
The coast of Norway, deeply indented by fjords, the channels of which, for a certain breadth, have a depth equal to that of the sea outside, seldom less than four hundred fathoms, and corresponding in some degree with the height of the precipitous cliffs which enclose them, abounding in all kinds of fish, and in the season with whales, which at one time used to number thousands in a shoal, appears, until within the last thirty years, to have been peculiarly the favourite haunt of the serpent. Paddle and screw are probably answerable for his non-appearance on the surface lately.
The west coast of the Isle of Skye is another locality from which several reports of it have been received during this century; less frequently it has been observed upon the eastern American coast-line, upon the sea-board of China, and in various portions of the broad ocean. It generally follows the track of whales, and in two instances observers affirm that it has been seen in combat with them.
I have no doubt but that the literature of Norway contains frequent references to it of olden date, but the earliest notice of it in that country which I have been able to procure is one contained in A Narrative of the North-East Frosty Seas, declared by the Duke of Mosconia his ambassadors to a learned gentlemen of Italy, named Galeatius Butrigarius, as follows[254]:—
“The lake called Mos, and the Island of Hoffusen in myddest thereof is in the degree 45.30 and 61. In this lake appeareth a strange monster, which is a serpent of huge bigness; and as, to all other places of the world, blazing stars do portend alteration, so doth this to Norway. It was seen of late in the year of Christ 1522, appearing far above the water, rowling like a great pillar, and was by conjecture far off esteemed to be of fifty cubits in length.”
Pontoppidan, the Bishop of Bergen, who published his celebrated Natural History of Norway in 1755, and who had at one time discredited its existence “till that suspicion was removed by full and sufficient evidence from creditable and experienced fishermen and sailors in Norway, of which there are hundreds, who can testify that they have annually seen them,” states that the North traders, who came to Bergen every year with their merchandise, thought it a very strange question, when they were seriously asked whether there were any such creatures, as ridiculous, in fact, as if the question had been put to them whether there be such fish as eel or cod.
According to Pontoppidan, these creatures continually keep at the bottom of the sea, excepting in the months of July and August, which is their spawning time, and then they come to the surface in calm weather, but plunge into the water again so soon as the wind raises the least wave.