The Stoor Worm: The World-Serpent of Orkney Whose Teeth Became the Islands
Before Orkney had its islands, says the oldest tale the islanders kept, the sea had a tenant that made the ocean itself seem small. The Stoor Worm —the Great Worm, stoor being the old Norse-descended word for vast—was the first and worst of the nine fearsome things that plague mankind: a sea-serpent so enormous that its body girdled the earth, that the flick of its tail could sweep towns into the sea, and that its breath—venomous, blighting, killing every green thing it touched—poisoned the coasts of whole kingdoms. When it woke hungry, it yawned : nine times it yawned before feeding, and with each yawn the tide poured into its gullet and whole shoals, and worse than shoals, poured with it. It anchored itself off a kingdom's shore and made its terms known through the terror of the people: it would depart only if fed, each Saturday at sunrise, seven virgins , bound and delivered on the rocks. The kingdom complied, weeping; the flower of its daughters went, week by week, down the W...