Welcome to the first post of 2023’s Month of Horror where, for the month of October, we look at the horrors, terrors, and all things gothic through history and natural history. Our first post is perhaps one of the most gruesome looking spirits and monsters I have ever seen. A skinless rider fused with a one-eyed skinless horse bringing death to crop, cattle, and human in the Scottish islands of Orkney this week we’re looking at the Nuckelavee.
Description
The nuckelavee is certainly one of the most iconic looking monsters throughout the world, mostly because of how horrifying it looks. As expected with folkstories descriptions of the nuckelavee do vary from telling to telling, but folklorist Walter Traill Dennison in the late-nineteenth century gave a particularly graphic description:
Some thought that rider and horse were really one, and that this was the shape of the monster. Nuckelavee’s head was like a man’s, only ten times larger, and his mouth projected like that of a pig and was enormously wide. There was not a hair on the monster’s body, for the very good reason that he had no skin. 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, when the horrid creature moved, showed white sinews in motion.
Dennison, ‘Orkney Folklore, Sea Myths’, 131-132
Dennison apparently interviewed a man called Tammie who had apparently had an encounter with the nuckelavee. Here he gave a slightly different description of the spirit:
The lower part of this terrible monster, as seen by Tammie, was like a great horse, with flappers like fins about his legs, with a mouth as wide as a whales, from which came breath like steam from a brewing-kettle. He had but one eye, and that as red as fire.
On him sat, or rather seemed to grow from his back, a huge man with no legs, and arms that reached nearly to the ground. His head was as big as a clue of simmons, and this huge head kept rolling from one shoulder to the other as if it meant to tumble off.
Dennison, ‘Orkney Folkore, Sea Myths’, 132-133
So we have a truly demonic looking creature. Resembling a centaur but completely skinned, long arms that could reach the ground, a large head that lopped side to side, and a steed, also skinless, with one giant eye. The fins in the second description were intentional as the nuckelavee is a water monster, and one of the many water monsters to haunt Scottish myth and folklore. The nuckelavee is not even the only Scottish water spirit that involves a horse – the kelpies and nuggles (which could form part of its name) also exist, but these are both freshwater spirits. Orkney is an archipelago so it is natural that the nuckelavee was a sea spirit. He is specifically tied to the annual battle between ocean deities. During the summer the Mither O’ The Sea, a form of Mother Nature deity, would keep him imprisoned under the sea but in the autumn another deity called Teran would battle her for control of the sea. Teran would win, unleashing the nuckelavee until the Mither could retake her control of the sea.
Weaknesses
The nuckelavee does have several weaknesses. Like most creatures from European folklore it is weak to iron, but the nuckelavee has two very specific weaknesses. Unlike Scotland’s other horse spirits, which are freshwater spirits, the nuckelavee is repelled by freshwater. Rain will deter the nuckelavee from leaving the ocean. The earlier mentioned Tammie interviewed by Dennison used this to survive his encounter with the nuckelavee. While walking at night he encountered the spirit and recognised it as the nuckelavee, so he ran along the shore of a loch. As the nuckelavee chased after Tammie the freshwater from his steps splashed against the frontlegs of the spirit making it scream in anger. He only managed to escape when he spotted a small stream. Jumping over it the nuckelavee could not cross, stuck on the other side the spirit roared in anger. One last thing could deter the nuckelavee. Burning seaweed would deter the spirit, but apparently would also enrage him.
Potential Origins
Orkney’s unique history compared to the rest of Scotland goes some way in explaining the origins of the nuckelavee. Both Orkney and the more northern Shetland Islands, which calls the nuckelavee the mukkelevie, were not part of Scotland until 1472 when they were given as part of a dowry when the Scottish king married the daughter of the King of Norway. Until then, Orkney and the Shetlands were ruled by the Norse and their descendants, but Orkney also had settlers from the Picts and Lowland Scots creating a very unique cultural mix. The nuckelavee being half-horse becomes part of a cultural mix of Celtic and Norse tales where horses play large roles. We have already mentioned the deadly kelpies, but Emily Zarka has highlighted horses rode in Norse myth. Odin rode a horse that could go across water and Hel rode a three-legged horse that would spread death and decay, the two things which Zarka argues links to the nuckelavee. An inability to cross running water is also common in stories of the supernatural and faeries, vampires for one cannot cross running water in many tales.
A key part of the nuckelavee tale is that he is believed to spread death and decay with failed crops being blamed on the spirit. Furthermore, mortasheen, a disease that would unexpectedly kill horses and cattle, were blamed on the nuckelavee in revenge for the Orcadians burning seaweed. For several centuries burning seaweed to produce ‘kelp’ – not the kelp we know today but was soda ash (sodium carbonate). This was a very productive industry for Orcadians as soda ash was in high demand as a fertiliser, produce soap, usage in ceramics, and as an alternative to baking soda. Having a pungent odor it was believed to deter the nuckelavee and the nuckelavee would spread mortasheen in revenge, however, burning seaweed to produce sodium carbonate has an alternate side-effect. A 2006 paper found that burning seaweed releases arsenic and that arsenic levels next to kelp burning pits showed elevated arsenic levels – it was not the nuckelavee causing mortasheen but the seaweed itself!
Belief in the Nuckelavee
As often we cannot actually pinpoint when belief in the nuckelavee began, but one of the earliest accounts potentially describing the nuckelavee comes from the sixteenth-century. What we do know is that tales of the nuckelavee surrounded the time that Orkney was involved with the kelp industry. It is noted that stories of the nuckelavee vanished when the kelp industry began to collapse in the nineteenth-century when alternate and artificial sources for fertiliser, soap, and ceramics were developed. At least by the late nineteenth-century the nuckelavee had began drifting into legend, but a powerful one. While it could simply be Dennison self-aggrandising with a Tammie wanting a minute in the limelight the account was told after ‘much higgling and persuasion‘ showing that the nuckelavee was still something to be feared. The same is less true today. A close friend of mine is from Orkney and lives there now so I asked him if he knew about the nuckelavee – he had not heard of the spirit. From an ever-present fear to a folktale the nuckelavee shows how our environment shapes our stories.
Bibliography:
- Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976)
- Storied, ‘Nuckelavee: Scotland’s Skinless Evil Monstrosity, Monstrum’, YouTube.com, (13/11/2020), [Accessed 23/10/2023]
- Mythology & Fiction Explained, ‘Nuckelavee: The Demon Horse of the Scottish Isles – (Orcadian/Scottish Mythology Explained)’, YouTube.com, (03/01/2019), [Accessed 25/10/2023]
- Theresa Bane, Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology, (Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc., 2013)
- W. Traill Dennison, ‘Orkney Folklore, Sea Myths’, The Scottish Antiquary, or, Northern Notes and Queries, 5:19, (1891), 130-133
- G.J. Riekie, P.N. Williams, A. Raab, and A.A. Meharg, ‘The potential for kelp manufacture to lead to arsenic pollution of remote Scottish islands’, Chemosphere, 65:2, (2006), 332-342
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