154 | SPORT IN NORWAY. 
or else that it is, or was, infested by a sea-(?)monster 
of some description. 
I made a note of one or two curious stories about 
this, and as the elk figures directly in one of them, and 
very probably in the other, I may as well give 
them. 
A man one day in Ringerige, while standing on 
the shore of the Tyri Fjord, saw what he conceived to 
be a sea-serpent of immense size swimming directly 
towards him. He could plainly detect its huge head, 
reared high above the surface, on either side of which 
the water seethed and hissed from the velocity with 
which it was moving along. The rest of the body was 
not visible, but he could plainly track its course from 
the undulatory movement of the water. At the lowest 
estimate he conceived it to be fifty or sixty yards in 
length. ‘Too terrified to run away, he remained fixed 
to the spot. Vow faucibus hxsit; much as he wished 
to call out, he was unable to get up the veriest ap- 
proach to a shriek. Meanwhile the awful brute was 
coming nearer and nearer. But fortunately for himself 
and for the credulously disposed, he remained, though 
against his inclination, to see the end. Indeed, he told 
the gentleman from whom I had the story that had he 
not thus remained he should have gone away firmly 
impressed with the idea that he had seen some monster 
or other; and that what turned out to be neither more 
