by Gary Dolman
Between the great industrial cities of Sunderland and Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north east of England there is a rather picturesque resort known as Marsden Bay. It is celebrated locally for a 100 ft high sea-stack of periclase and magnesian limestone known as Marsden Rock, and for a rather peculiar inn – the Marsden Grotto, which was blasted into the cliffs in the late Sixteenth Century.
Marsden Bay is also known for this rather discomforting legend:
In Anglo-Saxon times, much of the coastal area of North-East England was under the control of Norse and Danish settlers – of Vikings. These Vikings believed that the sea off the north-east coast of England was infested by a great sea-dragon known as a Shoney. This dragon or ‘orm’ supposedly had a great, horned head and protuberant eyes and small, almost insignificant limbs; surprisingly akin to the Lambton and Laidley Worms also spoken of separately in local legends.
Whenever these settlers were about to embark on a major sea journey, it is said that they first sacrificed a crewmember to the beast. After drawing lots the luckless victim would be trussed hand and foot. Then he would be strangled and his throat slashed, and he would be tossed overboard into the sea. The Shoney was evidently intended to take the sacrifice and leave the ship unmolested. Such bodies, often partially eaten, were washed up around the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and in Marsden Bay itself.
This ritual sacrifice soon evolved into a kind of maritime superstition and persisted long after the time of the Vikings. Centuries later, successive landlords of The Marsden Grotto would occasionally wake to find apparently sacrificial victims to the Shoney washed up onto the beach outside and the inn’s cellar was used as a temporary morgue on many such occasions.
It is quite amazing to think that Viking ritual should have persisted right up into the time of the Grotto. It is even more amazing and rather disturbing to find that the last-known date that one of these ritually-slain bodies was washed up into Marsden Bay was in 1928.
Please click here to view Mr. Dolman’s previous post:
The Cruel Exploitation of Children in the London Slave Market
Gary Dolman was born in the industrial North East of England in the 1960s but grew up in Yorkshire where he now lives with his wife, three children and dogs. He writes historical crime fiction which explores the very darkest places of the human mind. Mr. Dolman is the author of two novels, The Eighth Circle of Hell and Red Dragon – White Dragon.
