Case file · Cryptid
The sea monk of the Øresund
A creature resembling a monk in his habit was reportedly caught in the Øresund between Zealand and Sweden around 1546; King Christian III of Denmark sent a picture of it to Emperor Charles V.
1546 CE · 55.90, 12.70 · status: legend
The account
Pierre Belon (1553), Guillaume Rondelet (1554) and Conrad Gesner (1558) printed it as a 'monk fish', and Anders Sørensen Vedel's Danish chronicle (1575) gave it a length of four ells. Some sources say it was netted with herring, others that it stranded. It entered the Reformation-era imagery of portents and the bestiaries of the sea. The Danish zoologist Japetus Steenstrup argued in the 1850s that it was a giant squid.
The sceptical view
A squid, an angel shark or a seal, reshaped by the artist, are the usual identifications.