Lindorm is a Swedish word for dragon, a creature which even in nineteenth-century Scandinavia was no mythological beast. It was something people could encounter in the countryside, especially in or near marshes, caves, and bodies of water. (Some thought it to be a landlocked Sea Serpent.) In 1885, in a book on the subject, scientist and folklorist Gunnar Olaf Hylten-Cavallius collected forty-eight first-person accounts, one from a member of the Swedish parliament. Half of the accounts claimed multiple witnesses.

Hylten-Cavallius’s informants described Lindorms as ten to twenty feet in length. The body of a Lindorm “is as thick as a man’s thigh; his color is black with a yellow-flamed belly… He has a flat, round or square head, a divided tongue, and a mouth full of white, shining teeth.”

The “heavy and unwieldy” creature had a stubby tail and wild, hypnotic eyes as large as saucers. Aggressive and powerful, it would hiss and contract until its body “lies in billows; then he raises himself on his tail four or five feet up and pounces upon his prey,” according to Hylten-Cavallius. It was possible, though difficult, to kill a Lindorm. In its death throes it would emit an overwhelmingly foul odor. Encounters were terrifying to witnesses who, often for years afterward, suffered what today would be called post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hylten-Cavallius’s offer of a reward for a dead Lindorm found no takers. He would be the last scientist to take the reports seriously. Lindorms, whatever they may or may not have been, are seen no more.

SOURCE:

The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters,Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature
Written by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark – Copyright 1999 Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark