Brosno Dragon

Also Known As: also Brosnya, the Brosno Monster; Russian Бросненское чудовище, “the Brosno monster”; a lake monster of Lake Brosno in the Tver region, made famous by the Tver weekly Karavan+Ya in 1996
Region/Culture: Central and Eastern Europe
Mythos: Cryptids, Russian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A scaled, dragon-headed creature about five metres long that rises from a deep lake to overturn boats and take horses, cattle and men.
Role in Mythos: It is the guardian terror of Lake Brosno, credited in local legend with turning back Batu Khan’s army on the road to Novgorod.
Relation to Humans: Villagers on the shore speak of it as a danger to fishermen, swimmers and animals at the water’s edge. Journalists and monster hunters have come looking for it since 1996, and none has brought back a body.

The horses went down to drink first. An army had halted on the shore of a lake in the forests west of Tver, and the animals were led to the water in the evening, hot and thirsty after the march. The surface broke. Something enormous came up roaring and began to eat, horses and soldiers alike, and the men who were left ran. Their commander was Batu Khan, on his way to sack Novgorod in the thirteenth century. He looked at what the lake had done, took it for an omen and turned his army around.

That is the founding story of the Brosno Dragon, and Novgorod was indeed never taken by the Mongols. The lake is real enough. Brosno lies near the town of Andreapol in the Tver region of western Russia, a long cold sheet of water among pine and birch, and it is unusually deep for the country around it, about forty-three metres at its lowest point by the usual figure. Perch and burbot live in it. So, the villagers say, does something else.

The creature is known affectionately as Brosnya. People who claim to have seen it describe a big head held above the water, like a dragon’s or a dinosaur’s, with a long thin tail trailing behind and a body about five metres long. It is covered with scales, like a reptile. One woman on the shore put it more simply to a reporter in 1996: she had seen a head, like a fish, and big.

Other tales have gathered around the first. Varangians, the Norse traders and raiders of early Russia, are said to have rowed toward a small island in the lake to bury stolen treasure. A dragon came to the surface as they approached and swallowed the island. Old accounts mention a “sand mountain” that rose above the water from time to time and sank again. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the rumour ran that a giant creature surfaced in the evenings and went under the moment anyone came close. Fishermen were lost to an enormous mouth. In the Second World War, the story goes, the beast swallowed a German aeroplane, or in another telling a pilot who had bailed out over the water.

On an ordinary day none of this is visible. A fisherman sits in a small wooden boat on water the colour of strong tea. The air smells of resin and mud, and the only sound is the knock of the oar against the gunwale. Then the lake heaves under him, a dome of water lifts, and the boat goes over.

Nobody tells how the dragon came to be in the lake. It has no parents, no curse and no first day. It is simply there in the thirteenth century, already hungry.

How old the stories really are is another matter. The monster became widely known in 1996, when the Tver weekly Karavan+Ya printed reports of it and, that November, sent its own party to the lake under its editor, Gennady Klimov. Reuters picked the story up in December under the headline “Russia’s ‘Nessie’ frightens villagers,” with a tourist family from Moscow whose seven-year-old son had shouted that he saw a dragon, and an old woman who feared the thing might crawl into her house. Every legend above reaches print through that burst of coverage and the articles that followed it. No chronicle has been produced that names the lake. A Moscow paleontologist asked for her opinion called it a country fairy tale.

The hunters came anyway. In the summer of 2002 the Kosmopoisk research group, led by Vadim Chernobrov, swept the lake with an echo sounder and found something: a huge jelly-like mass the size of a railway carriage, hanging five metres above the bottom. They set off a small charge beneath it. The mass rose slowly toward the boat, the crew watched the screen, and what broke the surface was nothing resembling a monster. After further trips, the group concluded that Brosnya was gas.

The explanation is almost as strange as the dragon. Hydrogen sulphide gathers in the mud of the deep lake bed until a great bubble of it breaks free and climbs. When it bursts at the surface the water boils and humps, and a small boat above it will be thrown over. It stinks of rotten eggs. Seen from the shore at dusk, the eruption can look like a pair of opening jaws. Sceptics in the villages have their own candidates: a giant pike a century old, or a very large beaver.

Taken as a monster, its strengths are those of the lake itself. It is hidden by depth and dark water, it strikes from below without warning, and it is big enough to take a horse or tip a boat. It frightened off the army that had burned half of Russia. It can make an island disappear.

Its limits are just as plain. It has never left the water, and every story keeps it within reach of the shoreline. It retreats when people approach. It has left no carcass, no bone and no clear photograph. An echo sounder found only gas.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Brosno Dragon?

The Brosno Dragon, also called Brosnya, is a lake monster said to live in Lake Brosno in the Tver region of western Russia. Witnesses describe a scaled creature about five metres long with a head like a dragon or a dinosaur and a long thin tail. It is blamed for overturned boats and for taking fishermen and animals at the water’s edge.

Where is Lake Brosno?

Lake Brosno is near the town of Andreapol in the Tver region of western Russia. It is unusually deep for the area, about forty-three metres at its deepest point by the usual figure. Perch and burbot live in the lake.

Did the Brosno Dragon really stop Batu Khan?

The legend says the Brosno Dragon attacked Batu Khan’s horses and soldiers when his army stopped at the lake in the thirteenth century, and that he turned back from Novgorod as a result. No chronicle has been produced that names the lake. The story reaches print through newspaper coverage that began in 1996.

When did the Brosno Dragon become famous?

The Brosno Dragon became widely known in 1996, when the Tver weekly Karavan+Ya reported on it and sent a party to the lake in November under its editor, Gennady Klimov. Reuters carried the story that December under the headline “Russia’s ‘Nessie’ frightens villagers.”

Is there a scientific explanation for the Brosno Dragon?

The Kosmopoisk research group searched Lake Brosno with an echo sounder in 2002 and found a large jelly-like mass above the lake bed, which proved to be nothing resembling a monster. The group concluded that the Brosno Dragon is gas. Bubbles of hydrogen sulphide rise from the deep lake bed and burst at the surface, which can overturn a small boat and look like opening jaws from the shore.