Once upon a time there was a little girl who wished more than anything for her tiny-little ring to grow. Naturally enough, to execute her plan she set her ring around a small worm, which happened to be resting upon the shore of lake Lagarfljót. Upon returning the next day to see what had become of her project, she was shocked to see that not the ring, but the worm had grown, so in fear she hurled the hapless critter into the ice-cold lake where the worm continued to grow into a somewhat legendary but increasingly public Worm Monster.

The story, well known to Icelanders, refers to the mythic beast which goes by the name of Lagarfljotsormurinn, which began its lowly existence back in 1345, when the first reports emerged of its shy perusal of human folk. Much like the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster, Lagarfljotsormurinn has only occasionally made a public appearance, adopting different forms each time, and recently getting caught on grainy, ambiguous, but otherwise irrefutable video evidence. February 2 seems to have ended the uncertainty, when local resident Jkortur Kjerulf posted on the Icelandic broadcaster RUV a video of the Worms hypnotic procession through the inscrutable waves of lake Lagarfljót.

Not all critics are convinced. Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoolology Museum in Portland, Maine, who has even written a book about this beast, accuses the video of being a hoax.

  

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“Frankly, this video shows something that looks like a constructed snake-like object, with rigid sections, being propelled through the water,” his website, Cryptomundo, explained. “From the movement on the water’s surface, it would have to be something other than a mammal, like a giant worm, a reptile or a fish.

“The head appears to have been made to look like it belongs to a giant anaconda. The sections do not gracefully flow, but are sectionally moving from side-to-side. Mammals move up and down.

“It seems someone attempting this fakery, perhaps by using a robot with tarps, fish nets, or trash bags – a favorite for watery hoaxers – has decided to take the phrase ‘sea serpent’ and/or ‘worm’ too literally.”

He means that though the beast is supposed to have been a “wurm,” the word originally meant a dragon. Indeed earlier sightings have reported a hump, long neck, whiskers, and more dragon-like behavior. When the monster appeared to a group of school children, back in 1998, they described Lagarfljotsormurinn in more traditional terms.

Still other critics of an especially skeptical perspective opine that the beast is really nothing more than a series of fishing nets being tugged together through the water.