6o 
SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED, 
and differing in opinion as to the identity of the creature 
which had caused the catastrophe, some maintaining that it 
must have been a sea-serpent, and others shaking their 
heads and asserting that nothing but a colossal lobster 
could have done it. 
Pontoppidan, in writing his history of Norway, of course 
had before him the statements of Olaus Magnus ; but, though 
their author was an archbishop, he did not accept them 
with the childlike simplicity generally ascribed to him. 
Quoting, and, singularly enough, misquoting, the Swedish 
prelate as referring to a sea-serpent, when he is describing, 
incorrectly, one of the Acalephce, or sea-nettles, Pontoppidan 
says : — 
" I have never heard of this sort, and should hardly believe 
the good Olaus if he did not say that he affirmed this from his 
own experience. The disproportion makes me think there must 
be some error of the press . . . He mixes truth and fable together 
according to the relations of others ; but this was excusable in 
that dark age when that author wrote. Notwithstanding all this, 
we, in the present more enlightened age, are much obliged to him 
for his industry and judicious observations." 
Of the sea-serpent Pontoppidan writes : — 
" I have questioned its existence myself, till that suspicion was 
removed by full and sufficient evidence from creditable and expe- 
rienced fishermen and sailors in Norway, of which there are hun- 
dreds who can testify that they have annually seen them. All 
these persons agree very well in the general description ; and 
others who acknowledge that they only know it by report or by 
what their neighbours have told them, still relate the same parti- 
culars. In all my inquiry about these affairs I have hardly spoke 
with any intelligent person born in the manor of Nordland who 
was not able to give a pertinent answer, and strong assurances of 
the existence of this fish ; and some of our north traders that 
come here every year with their merchandize think it a very strange 
