Nuckelavee

What it is

The nuckelavee belongs to the folklore of Orkney, the island group north of mainland Scotland. It is a demon, a being of ill will, and it lives mainly in the sea. On land it shows itself as a horse with a human torso growing from its back, as though a rider had fused with the animal. The folklorist Katharine Briggs judged it the worst of the demons of Scotland's Northern Isles. It is a solitary creature, without companions, and old accounts give it no good side at all. People spoke of it as an explanation for misfortune they could not otherwise account for.

Appearance and reports

Descriptions differ from telling to telling. From a distance, or in the dark, the nuckelavee could pass for an ordinary horseman. Close up it was said to have no skin: black blood ran through yellow veins, and muscle and sinew showed as a moving mass. A single giant eye burned red in the horse's head, whose wide mouth breathed out a choking vapour. One islander, Tammas, told the folklorist Walter Traill Dennison that he had met the creature and got away. He described a human torso with no legs, arms long enough to reach the ground, and a huge head that rolled back and forth. Dennison said the name means Devil of the Sea.

Harm blamed on it

Islanders held the nuckelavee responsible for a long list of disasters. Its breath was said to wither crops and make livestock ill. It was blamed for droughts, for epidemics, and for poor harvests. From 1722, seaweed was burned on Stronsay to make soda ash, a substance used to treat acid soil and later in soap and glass. The smoke was thought to enrage the creature. People said it struck the horses of Stronsay with a deadly disease called mortasheen to punish the islanders for the burning, and that the sickness then spread to the other islands working in the same trade.

Confinement and escape

An ancient Orcadian spirit, the Mither o' the Sea, was the only power able to hold the nuckelavee back. She kept it shut away through the summer months. Like many sea monsters, it could not bear fresh running water, so a person it chased had only to cross a stream to be safe. Tammas said he escaped by splashing water from a loch on the creature, which distracted it, and then running to a channel and jumping to the far bank. The monster was often seen near a beach, but it never came ashore in rain.

Origins and names

Orcadian folklore drew heavily on Scandinavian tradition and also carried older Celtic stories, so the nuckelavee may be a joining of the two. Folklorists have connected it with the Norwegian nøkk, the Shetland nuggle and the kelpie. In Shetland the same demon was called a mukkelevi. The word nuckelavee comes from the Orcadian knoggelvi. Spellings in old records vary, because the collectors who wrote the tales down in the 19th century often anglicised names and set them inconsistently. The antiquarian Samuel Hibbert linked the first part of the name to Old Nick, a name for the Devil, and to the Latin necare, which means to kill.

How Nuckelavee is kept

This is a belief rather than a festival, so there is nothing to attend. What people did was avoid the creature and speak carefully of it. Islanders would not say its name without a prayer straight afterwards. They kept away from the shore when the light failed, since the nuckelavee was often near a beach. Anyone followed by it was told to get across running fresh water, which it could not cross. In rain it stayed off the land altogether, and for the whole summer the Mither o' the Sea held it confined.

When and where

The nuckelavee was said to be free for most of the year and confined through the summer by the Mither o' the Sea. It never came ashore in rain, and it kept to the ground near beaches. Old tellings treat it as a threat of the darker, wetter months rather than of any fixed festival day.

The belief belongs to Orkney, the Northern Isles of Scotland, and it is strongest there. Stronsay features in the accounts: the seaweed burning that began there in 1722, and the death of its horses, were both blamed on the creature. Shetland knew a comparable demon under the name mukkelevi.

What Nuckelavee means

For the islanders, the nuckelavee gave a shape to bad luck they could not explain: failed crops, dry seasons, outbreaks of disease, animals dying. Naming a cause, even a monstrous one, made a run of misfortune easier to bear and to talk about. The stories also carried practical sense in a place ringed by sea and cut by streams. Running water and a prayer were small protections people could hold on to, and the Mither o' the Sea stood for the sea's own power to hold harm in check.

Questions people ask about Nuckelavee

See also

The BurrymanA man clad in burdock burrs walks a Scottish town for a day, bringing luck as he goesShoe throwingThe act of hurling footwear for sport, wedding luck, protest or overhead display.Need-fireA ritual fire kindled by friction to ward off cattle plague, disease and harmUnspoken WaterA Scottish healing custom in which water was fetched in silence and given to the sick

Good reading and sources

• Nuckelavee on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-09.