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maritime folklore

The Beast Mistaken for Land

A journal entry on the hafgufa, the vast Norse sea creature said to be so still and so large that sailors mistook its back for an island, sometimes at fatal cost.

The Hook That Hauled Up Land

A journal entry on Te Matau a Māui, the demigod's fishhook said to have raised the North Island of New Zealand from the sea, and its afterlife as a constellation in Hawaiian sky-lore.

The Ox-Headed Serpent of the Drowned Coast

Along Galicia's Costa da Morte, fishermen once spoke of the Urco, a vast sea serpent with the head of an ox, said to rise before wrecks and storms. The entry follows the beast through the memories of a coastline that has buried more sailors than it has ever given back.

Marginalia of the Deep

A journal entry tracing the sea serpent from Jörmungandr's coils around Midgard to the sightings and chart-drawings of Norwegian sailors and the naturalists who took their word seriously.

Where the Ink Runs Out

A look at terra incognita, the old cartographer's term for the unmapped edge of the world, and the dragons, monsters and blank spaces that filled it.

The Skin Left on the Rocks

A journal entry on the selkie of Scottish, Irish, and Faroese tradition — the seal that becomes human by shedding its skin, and what is owed, and lost, when that skin is taken.

The Bells Under Dunwich

A record of Dunwich, the medieval Suffolk port swallowed by the sea, and the enduring claim that its church bells can still be heard tolling beneath the waves during storms.

The Serpent at the Chart's Edge

A journal account of Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent of Norse myth, whose coils were said to ring the inhabited world and whose shadow lingers at the margins of old sea-charts.
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