I’ve covered some pretty gruesome monsters before (shoutout to the manananggal) but the
Orcadian legend I put before you today ranks pretty high up there, even in my book.
The Nuckelavee.
Like a “hideous centaur” it is a fleshless human torso atop an equally de-fleshed horse
body.
That alone is terrifying.
Then there are the tales of this monster about narrow escapes and widespread death and decay.
The creature ravaged the Orkney Islands of the northern coast of Scotland, gleefully
killing humans, mangling livestock, and blighting crops.
Declared “the most cruel and malignant of all uncannie beings that trouble mankind”
by an academic journal from the late 19th century, the Nuckelavee’s roots are entwined
with the history of Scotland itself, including its Nordic origins, its landscape of jagged
cliffs and raging sea, and the influence of the kelp industry.
Sound strange?
You have no idea.
[Monstrum intro.]
Horses play a vital role in Scottish folklore but there is only one Nuckelavee.
The monster gets its name in part from the word “neugle,” which is
any “water-spirit traditionally appearing in the form of a horse.”
However, much more than a mere equine monstrosity “Nuckelavee” is a “spirit in flesh”
whose home is the ocean and whose name actually translates to “Devil of the Sea.”
The human torso boasts an oversized head that rolls side to side as if in danger of falling
off of the neck with a whale-like mouth.
It has arms that almost reach the ground and is connected at the waist to a horse’s body
with one red eye and “fin-like flippers fixed to the legs.”
No one knows exactly what shape it takes in the water, but on land the Nuckelavee assumes
the terrifying form of a deformed man riding a horse just “as terrible in aspect as himself.”
The man-horse chimaera appear as a singular, grotesque body.
A late 19th-century text describes the fig-yer in gory detail: “the whole surface of the
monster appeared like raw and living flesh, from which the skin had been stripped.
You could see the black blood flowing through his veins, and every movement of his muscles.”
Spoken of with “bated breath” and “unutterable horror,” this malevolent monster is hell
bent on wreaking plague and pestilence and has no redeeming qualities.
The Nuckelavee is only active in winter since the mythical giver of life, Mither, or Mother,
of the Sea, keeps him restrained during the summer months when she has control over the
sea and all its inhabitants.
Every autumn the Teran, a hostile enemy winter spirit, battles Mither for control of the
ocean.
Drained from the work of the summer months, she loses the battle and is forced to retreat,
leaving the Teran in charge, and the Nuckelavee free until the Mither’s strength is regained
the following Spring.
Despite calling the sea his home, the Nuckelavee has an aversion to freshwater, which means
he never visits while it’s raining.
Stories like this one from The Scottish antiquary, or, Northern notes and queries in 1891 speak
to his terror of freshwater and the Nuckelavee’s grotesque appearance.
Legend has it that a man named Tammas was walking home along a road near the sea-shore
on a moonless night, when he suddenly saw a huge, unearthly thing moving towards him
in the darkness.
He realized the creature was “the dreaded Nuckelavee.”
Tammas knew that he could not outrun the monster but he remembered the Nuckelavee could not tolerate fresh water.
So he hugs the edge of the loch on the opposite side of the path.
In doing so, his feet splash fresh water onto the monster’s foreleg.
The Nuckelavee shies away and Tammas runs off.
The creature pursues him, bellowing with a sound as deep and loud as the “roaring sea.”
He could feel the creature try to grab him, but Tammas manages a narrow escape by jumping
across a small river.
The Nuckelavee is enraged, unable to cross the fresh water.
According to Scottish folklore, water in general was to be feared.
The dangers of rushing water, pools of unknown depth, and the raging sea all pose a risk
to the living who aren’t cautious.
But it is also a mode of salvation—water does support life after all.
In Scottish tradition water is a place of collision—where water meets land, invaders
storm shores, and where ideologies may be spread from one place to another through travel.
To them, the shoreline was a boundary between the supernatural and the natural.
Perhaps that is why in Scottish lore water also functions as a sanctuary.
It is said that the shore below the high tide line is a safe space from all manner of preternatural
creatures.
Scottish folklore is full of water-horses, but the Nuckelavee is unique in that it is
a solitary creature.
Other monsters like kelpies, and njuggles are said to be much more numerous.
Encounters with such creatures are always dangerous—no benevolent water-horse exists.
But the Nuckelavee is even more threatening, as it is one of a very few sea monsters who
come on land in Scottish folklore.
So can we attempt to explain this horrible creature?
The Orkney Islands close proximity to Norway meant its inhabitants experienced early and
lasting Nordic influence.
And Nordic mythology is full of mythical horses.
Take for example, Odin’s steed Sleipnir.
With eight legs and teeth engraved with runes, he galloped through the air and across the
sea.
Odin used Sleipnir to travel to the world of the dead, Hel, which was ruled
over by a being of the same name.
Hel the goddess was said to ride on a three-legged horse during times of pestilence and disease.
One horse associated with the sea and another with disease and death?
Sounds like the Nuckelavee.
It’s possible that when Orkney was absorbed by Scotland in the 15th century, their culture
appropriated these Nordic icons, made them more “monstrous” and thus was born the
Nuckelavee.
Aside from running water there was one other thing that repelled the Nuckelavee—seaweed.
Or rather it is said that “The burning of sea-weed for kelp gave a terrible offence
to Nuckelavee, and filled him with diabolical rage.”
While we now think of kelp as a type of seaweed, through the 18th and 19th centuries kelp referred
to the soda ash produced from burning seaweed.
This ash could be used to make glass and soap, but the byproducts were also used as a food
source for people and livestock, as fertilizer, and even in traditional medicine.
The Nuckelavee’s abhorrence of the pungent smell of burning seaweed, and perhaps his
perception of the act as an insult to his ocean home, was said to be the cause of Mortasheen,
an equine influenza that killed horses across the kelp-burning islands.
The Orkney kelp trade largely died out in the 20th century, which corresponds with a
decline in belief in the Nuckelavee.
Mortasheen was only one example of the real devastation blamed on the monster.
The Nuckelavee was thought to be responsible for destroyed crops, dead animals, and disease
of all kinds which were said to be caused by his control of mildew, salty air from the
sea, or the creature’s own terrible breath.
Oftentimes we use monsters to explain the unexplainable: drought, famine, and disease.
And for the Nuckelavee, it reveals how Scotland is intimately connected to the landscape and
local identity.
True, not all cultures create a monster that takes shape as a disgusting, skinless, ugly
cousin of centaurs—but hey.
Apparently only Scotland is that cool.