A lake in Norway's Telemark county where a serpent called Selma has been described since 1750. In the 1880s a woman named Gunhild Bjøge is said to have killed a young one on the shore with an axe. The serpent appears on the coat of arms of Seljord municipality — that is, in official heraldry. A sonar expedition in 2000 recorded moving objects on the bottom that it could not identify.

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Lake Van and Its Monster

Turkey's largest lake, strongly alkaline and nearly lifeless — which makes the monster story an odd one. In 1997 a university teacher, Ünal Kozak, filmed a dark object moving across the surface; the footage went round Turkish television and he wrote a book about the creature. A statue of the monster stands on the waterfront at Van.