The Turtles of Hoan Kiem Lake: A Legend, and the Last One

Hoan Kiem Lake takes its name from a legend about a magical tortoise, and for most of the lake's recorded history a real one lived in it too. The legend explains the name. The animal was something else: a giant softshell turtle, estimated at about two hundred years old, that died in the lake in January 2016 and is now kept in the temple on its northern island. Both belong to the walk round the lake, and it helps to keep them apart.

The legend

The Viet Nam Government Portal tells the story in a few lines. The lake was once called Luc Thuy, Green Water. In the fifteenth century, during Le Loi's war against the Ming, a magical tortoise takes the sword, and Le Loi concludes that the god who lent it wanted it back. The lake has been Hoan Kiem, the Lake of the Returned Sword, ever since; many Hanoians call it Ho Guom, Sword Lake.

Le Loi's victory, and his reign as Le Thai To from 1428, are history. The sword and the tortoise are a legend, and an old kind of legend: a 2019 study in a Vietnamese peer-reviewed journal reads the gift of a sword from heaven as a common motif in the founding stories of kings. Popular retellings add a fisherman who finds the blade in his net, and give the sword a name. They are tellings, not records.

The small tower on its islet in the middle of the lake, the Turtle Tower, is often photographed as if it belonged to the legend. It does not. It is a late-nineteenth-century building from the French period, and the islet is not open to visitors. See it from the west shore, where the walk stops.

The turtle that was real

On the east shore the walk stops for a different story. The lake's last giant softshell turtle died there on the afternoon of 19 January 2016, VnExpress reported, estimated at about two hundred years old, the cause given as old age. Alive it measured 185 centimeters with a shell a meter long, and weighed 169 kilograms. It was found by the shore.

German experts came that April to preserve it. The preserved body was accepted on 31 August 2018 and handed to the display at Ngoc Son Temple on the morning of 16 March 2019: more than two meters long and 1.1 meters wide. Beside it lies an older turtle caught in the lake in 1967, 2.1 meters long and 250 kilograms, by the government portal's account.

What species it was is still argued over, so the walk does not name one, and it makes no claim that it was the last of its kind anywhere. It was the last one in this lake, and that is enough.

Seeing them

The east shore is a free public garden, lit at night, and the Turtle Tower is in view across the water from the west shore. The two preserved turtles are inside Ngoc Son Temple, on the island at the lake's north end, reached by The Huc Bridge. The bridge and island are ticketed, 50,000 VND by the city's published fees, and the ticket office is at the gate.

Our walk round the water, Hoan Kiem Lake: The Lake of the Returned Sword, stops at both shores and at the temple gate, and our Hoan Kiem Lake companion tells the rest of the lake's story. Stand on the east shore as long as you like; nobody is timing you.