The Sea Monsters of Arnarfjörður

One fjord in the Westfjords accounts for nearly 200 of Iceland's 4,000+ recorded sea-monster sightings — enough to earn it a dedicated museum.

Arnarfjörður, a long fjord cutting into the Westfjords of Iceland, has a documented claim to being the most monster-haunted body of water in the country. Of more than four thousand recorded sea and lake monster sightings collected from Icelandic sources over the centuries, close to two hundred come from this single fjord. Icelandic tradition classifies its sea creatures with a taxonomist's precision. The fjörulalli, or Shore Laddie, is a low, dog-sized creature that patrols the tideline. The hafmaður, the Sea Man, resembles a human figure glimpsed at a distance in the water. The skeljaskrímsli, the Shell Monster, is armored and slow-moving. The faxaskrímsli, the Combed or Maned Monster — sometimes described closer to a sea-horse than anything mammalian — is the type most frequently blamed for the more dramatic incidents. The best-documented case involves the six-oared fishing boat Heppinn — "Lucky" — which in 1915 reportedly ran aground on the back of a faxaskrímsli at the mouth of the fjord, the crew feeling the vessel lurch and scrape against something large and living beneath the waterline before it submerged. Sightings did not stop with the arrival of engine-powered boats: the fisherman Sverrir Garðarsson reported two separate encounters with a large unidentified creature in the fjord in 2000 and 2002. The village of Bíldudalur, on the fjord's southern shore, now hosts Skrímslasetrið, the Icelandic Sea Monster Museum, which collects and displays the oral testimony behind the sightings rather than attempting to resolve what, if anything, was actually seen.