112 THE VARIOUS ACCOUNTS , [N°. 3.| 
together. The weather was calm, but as soon as the sun set and 
the wind began to blow, it left the fjord, and like one who runs 
out a coil of rope can know the length thereof, so one could see 
how long it was, before it had wound off all its coils, and 
stretched itself at full length.” 
In this account we read again that the animal is seen in calm 
weather and that it shows coils or windings. For the first time 
the fact is mentioned that it can stretch itself, evidently in a 
straight line. Further on we shall read this several times. 
4. — 1720. — (Ponropriwan, Det forste Forség paa Norges 
naturlige Historie). % 
“THoRLACK THORLACKSEN has told me that in 1720 a sea-serpent 
had been shut up a whole week in a little inlet, into which it 
came by high tide through a narrow entrance of seven or eight 
fathoms deep, and that eight days afterwards, when it had left the 
inlet, a skin of a snake or serpent was found. One end of the 
skin had entirely sunk into the water of the inlet, and no one 
could guess how long it was, the inlet in which the skin partly 
lay, being several fathoms deep. The other end of this skin was 
washed ashore by the current, where everybody could see it; ap- 
parently it could not be used, for it consisted of a soft, slimy 
mass. ‘HORLACKSEN was a native of the harbour of Kobbervueg”’. 
It is evident that a true sea-serpent visited the little fjord daily 
during that week, most probably in its pursuit of fish, for the | 
sea-serpent is sufficiently known to the Norwegians, and if it had 
been an animal different from the common Norwegian sea-serpent , 
IT am sure that it would not have been called a sea-serpent. It is also 
stated that the animal left the inlet. But the skin found afterwards 
was certainly nothing else but a putrified long arm or tentacle of 
a great calamary. The soft slimy nature of the skin sufficiently 
proves my hypothesis. The great calamary died in the fjord or 
inlet, and its long dead arm was washed ashore by the current, 
while the body sunk. 
&. — 1734, July 6. — The earliest account of Hans Ecxpn’s 
encounter with the sea-serpent we find in his work published in 
