Selma
Aliases: Seljord serpent / Territory: Norvège
The serpent of Norway's Lake Seljord: sightings since 1750, sonar hunts that found nothing, and a place on the town's coat of arms.
Seljordsvatnet is a narrow, deep lake in Telemark, hemmed in by wooded slopes that drop into dark water. Since the mid-eighteenth century, people living along its shores have reported a large serpentine animal, known in modern telling as Selma: a dark body showing coils or humps, sometimes a head likened to a horse or an elk, seen mostly on calm summer days.
The founding story, endlessly retold, dates to around 1750, when a local man named Gunleik Andersson-Verpe is said to have been attacked by a 'sea horse' while rowing across the lake. Reports have trickled in century after century, with notable clusters in the twentieth — enough for the municipality of Seljord to adopt the serpent outright: the creature appears on the official coat of arms, and its silhouette greets visitors to the village.
The lake has had its share of field cryptozoology too. Starting in 1998, Swedish organiser Jan-Ove Sundberg ran several expeditions under the GUST banner, deploying sonar, hydrophones and even a small submersible. The haul: a few ambiguous echoes, no usable imagery, no specimen — much the same outcome as the Loch Ness campaigns, and persuasive to neither zoologists nor sceptics of anything except how hard lakes are to survey.
Sober explanations cover the record well. Boat wakes and seiches paint moving 'coils' on flat water; waterlogged logs surface abruptly; moose and beavers swim across; otters travel in file. What remains is a sincere, abundant and locally cherished body of testimony — and no physical trace. Selma today belongs as much to Telemark's identity as to speculative zoology.
+ Notable reports
// Lake Seljord (Seljordsvatnet)
Gunleik Andersson-Verpe, rowing across the lake, is said to have been attacked by a 'sea horse' — the tradition's founding account, cited ever since.
// Shores of Seljordsvatnet
Recurring waves of sightings describe a dark, humped body and a horse-like head in calm conditions; several generations of residents claim to have seen the animal.
// Lake Seljord
Jan-Ove Sundberg's GUST expeditions sweep the lake with sonar and hydrophones, plus a small submersible. A few unidentified echoes, no conclusive evidence.
+ Leading rational explanations
- Boat wakes, seiches and light effects on calm water mimicking an undulating body
- Waterlogged logs rising suddenly to the surface
- Swimming moose, beavers or otters, misleading in silhouette at a distance
- Cultural expectation reinforced by the coat of arms and local tourism
Status note
Class 2: a long and rich record of testimony, but no probative photograph and no conclusive sonar return despite dedicated expeditions — no physical trace at all.
+ Frequently asked questions
- What is Selma?
- The reputed lake serpent of Lake Seljord in Norway's Telemark, reported since about 1750. Witnesses describe a long, dark, humped body; no physical evidence has ever been obtained.
- Has anyone searched for Selma scientifically?
- Private expeditions — the GUST campaigns from 1998 onward, using sonar and a submersible — surveyed the lake without conclusive results. No scientific institution treats the case as open.
- Why is Selma on a coat of arms?
- The municipality of Seljord made the serpent its official heraldic emblem, a mark of how deeply the legend anchors local identity. It is a rare case of a cryptid institutionalised by a local government.