In 1740, Norwegian pastor Hans Egede published an account of an extraordinary encounter during one of his missionary voyages to Greenland:

Anno 1734, July. On the 6th. appeared a very terrible sea-monster, which raised itself so high above the water, that its head reached above our main-top. It had a long sharp snout, and blew like a whale, had broad, large flappers, and the body was, as it were, covered with a hard skin, and it was very wrinkled and uneven on its skin; moreover on the lower part it was formed like a snake, and when it went under water again, it cast itself backwards and in so doing it raised its tail above the water, a whole ship-length from its body.

He gives a similar account in A Description of Greenland, published five years later. Eric Pontoppidan, who became bishop of Bergen in 1746, wrote in his Natural History of Norway, “I have hardly spoke with any intelligent person born in manor of Nordland, who was not able to give a pertinent answer, and strong assurances the existence of this fish; and some of our north traders, that come here every year their merchandise, think it a very strange question, when they are seriously asked whether there be any such creature; they think it as ridiculous as if the question was put them whether there be such fish as eel or cod.”