# A large unknown animal, the Storsjoodjuret, lives in Sweden's Lake Storsjon, and the local government once protected it by law **No verdict.** Storsjoodjuret is a genuine, centuries-old folk tradition of the Jamtland region: a serpentine lake creature reported in Sweden's Lake Storsjon since at least the 1630s, hunted with royal backing in the 1890s, and formally protected as an endangered species by the Jamtland county board from 1986 until the decision was repealed in 2005. All of that is documented history. The claim we rate is narrower: that a real, undescribed large animal actually inhabits the lake. That claim rests on eyewitness reports, folklore, and inconclusive footage, with no specimen, carcass, bone, or confirmed image ever produced. On the evidence it is unproven. The 1986 protection order was an administrative and cultural gesture, not scientific confirmation that the animal exists. Category: Cryptids & Monsters · Era: 17th century to present · First circulated: The oldest surviving written account dates to a 1635 manuscript; public fascination surged in the 1890s after a wave of sightings prompted an organized hunt, and the legend has circulated continuously since · Believed by: A regional Jamtland tradition rather than a global movement: the creature is woven into the identity of Ostersund and its lake country, appears on the town's coat of arms, and anchors local tourism, while cryptozoology enthusiasts abroad treat it as Sweden's answer to Loch Ness URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/storsjoodjuret ## Summary Storsjoodjuret, literally the Great Lake Monster, is a serpentine creature said to live in Lake Storsjon in Jamtland, central Sweden. Written reports go back to a 1635 manuscript, and a later 1685 account placed the beast's head beneath the Froso Runestone with its body stretched across the whole lake. A surge of sightings in the 1890s led locals to found a company, backed by King Oscar II, that commissioned an iron trap to catch it; the hunt failed. Witnesses have described a long, humped, horse-headed animal breaking the surface. In 1986 the Jamtland county administrative board declared the creature and its nest and offspring a protected endangered species, a decision quietly repealed in 2005 after the Parliamentary Ombudsman questioned its legal basis. This case file keeps two things apart: a real place, a real 400-year folk tradition, and real legal quirks; and the claim it rates, that an actual unknown large animal lives in the lake. No physical specimen has ever been found, and the verdict on the animal's existence is unproven. ## The claim That a large, biologically real but scientifically undescribed animal, serpentine or eel-like, with humps and a horse-like head, inhabits Lake Storsjon in Sweden, and that the many eyewitness reports and occasional films record a genuine creature rather than waves, logs, animals, or misperception. ## Origin and timeline - 1635: The earliest surviving written account of a lake serpent (sjoorm) in Storsjon appears in a manuscript associated with Morten Pedersen Herdal. Later commentators link the tale to the rune-master Kettil Runske, said to have magically bound the serpent to the lakebed by carving a spell into the Froso Runestone. - 1685: The prolocutor Andreas Plantin records a version during an antiquities inquiry, writing that beneath the runestone lies a dreadfully large serpent's head, with the body stretching across Storsjon to distant shores where the tail is buried. The Froso Runestone is real, but its actual inscription concerns the christianization of Jamtland, not any monster. - 1890s: A wave of reported sightings makes the creature a public sensation. Witnesses describe a long, dark, humped animal moving through the water. Interest grows enough to organize a formal effort to capture it. - 1894: A company of local businessmen is founded to catch the monster and secures the sponsorship of King Oscar II. A large baited iron trap is commissioned to snare the animal. The venture catches nothing, and the failed hunt is later mocked in a satirical cartoon by Albert Engstrom in the magazine Strix. - 1943: The creature is adopted as a heraldic emblem of the town of Ostersund, the only city on the lake, cementing its place in regional identity long before any question of legal protection arises. - 1986: To mark Ostersund's 200-year anniversary, the Jamtland county administrative board declares Storsjoodjuret an endangered species and places the animal, together with its nest and offspring, under legal protection, making it formally illegal to kill, harm, or capture it. - 2008-08: A film crew claims to have captured the creature on camera, reporting that infrared equipment showed a warm-bodied mass in the lake. The clip shows a blurry, elongated shape in the depths. It is widely reported but proves nothing, and skeptics attribute it to fish, debris, or artifacts of low-resolution footage. - 2005: The county board repeals the 1986 protection order after the Parliamentary Ombudsman (Justitieombudsmannen) criticizes the legal basis for protecting an animal whose existence had never been established. The tradition and tourism around the creature continue undiminished. ## The evidence, claim by claim - Claim: Hundreds of witnesses across four centuries have seen the same kind of animal, which is too much testimony to dismiss. Evidence: The Jamtli county museum holds on the order of 200 documented testimonies gathered from roughly 500 people, a genuinely large body of reports. But volume of testimony is not the same as physical proof. Lake monster reports cluster wherever a strong local tradition primes people to interpret ambiguous shapes on the water, and consistency of description can reflect a shared cultural template as much as a shared animal. Eyewitness accounts establish that people see something they find strange; they cannot, by themselves, establish what it is. - Claim: The 2008 infrared footage showed a warm-bodied creature moving in the lake. Evidence: The footage is blurry, low-resolution, and shows no anatomical detail, only an elongated silhouette. No peer-reviewed analysis ever confirmed a novel species, and the warm-mass claim was never independently verified. Skeptics offered ordinary explanations: a school of fish, drifting debris, or a camera artifact. Ambiguous film that is equally compatible with mundane causes cannot carry the weight of demonstrating an unknown animal. - Claim: The Swedish government officially protected the creature, so authorities must have taken its existence seriously. Evidence: The 1986 protection order was a decision of a regional administrative board, timed to a town anniversary, and it functioned as a civic and cultural gesture rather than a scientific finding. Its own fate makes the point: in 2005 it was repealed precisely because the Parliamentary Ombudsman challenged the legality of protecting an animal never shown to exist. A protective decree records enthusiasm and local pride, not a verified specimen. - Claim: A deep, cold, 90-metre lake could easily hide a large unknown animal. Evidence: Storsjon is large and deep, which is part of why the legend endures, but depth does not manufacture a breeding population of large vertebrates. A viable population would need to feed, reproduce, and die in the lake over centuries, yet no carcass, skeleton, bone, or unambiguous carcass fragment has ever surfaced, and no unexplained large species has been netted, sonar-mapped, or otherwise captured. The absence of any physical trace across 400 years weighs against a real animal, not for one. - Claim: The oldest accounts, tied to the Froso Runestone, show the tradition rests on ancient testimony. Evidence: The written record is genuinely old, but it is folkloric, not zoological. The runestone is authentic, yet its inscription says nothing about a monster; the serpent-binding story was attached to it by later commentators. The 1635 and 1685 texts describe a magically bound serpent stretching the length of the lake, a mythic image, not a field observation. Antiquity of a legend testifies to its cultural staying power, not to the biology it describes. ## Why people believe it - The tradition is genuinely ancient and local. A story written down in the 1630s, tied to a real runestone and a real lake, carries the authority of centuries and of place, and it is embedded in the identity of the people who live around Storsjon. - The lake itself invites it. A vast, deep, cold body of water with a dark surface and shifting light is the perfect stage for ambiguous shapes, and the human eye readily assembles waves, logs, and swimming animals into a single moving body. - Official acts lent it borrowed weight. Royal sponsorship of the 1894 hunt and the 1986 protection order let believers point to kings and county boards as if institutions had endorsed the animal, when both were really acts of civic pride and spectacle. - It has a famous sibling. Loch Ness gave the world a template for the deep-lake monster, and Storsjoodjuret slots neatly into it, so the Swedish creature borrows plausibility from a globally familiar story shape. - It is good for the region. The monster anchors museums, tourism, festivals, and a coat of arms, so a whole community has warm, non-cynical reasons to keep the tradition vivid regardless of whether an animal is ever found. ## Open questions - What, physically, are witnesses seeing? Even granting that no unknown species exists, a large body of sincere reports invites study of how waves, logs, otters, and waterfowl combine with expectation to produce a consistent monster image. - The 2008 footage has never received a definitive published analysis. A rigorous frame-by-frame study by neutral experts would settle what the clip actually shows better than either enthusiasts or offhand skeptics have. - How much did the 1894 royal hunt and the 1986 protection order themselves shape and sustain the sightings that followed, by keeping the creature culturally salient and priming observers to look for it? ## Sources - Storsjoodjuret, Wikipedia (2025): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storsj%C3%B6odjuret - Storsjoodjuret, Sweden's own lake monster, Sharing Sweden (Swedish Institute) (2020): https://sharingsweden.se/materials/storsjoodjuret-swedens-own-lake-monster - Storsjoodjuret, The Great Lake Monster, Visit Ostersund (2023): https://visitostersund.se/en/storsjoodjuret-the-great-lake-monster/ - Swedish sea monster 'caught on film', The Local (Sweden) (2008): https://www.thelocal.se/20080828/13980 - Meet Storsjoodjuret, the Legendary Swedish Lake Monster That Rivals Nessie, Mental Floss (2018): https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/551910/move-over-nessie-swedens-has-its-own-infamous-lake-monster - Att fanga det som kanske inte finns: Natursyn i fangstforsok och fridlysning av Storsjoodjuret 1893-2009, Lund University Publications (2012): https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/3163cc02-d106-4cd1-803e-9e27f14053d8 Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/storsjoodjuret