Imaginative animal geographies: Scotland’s mythical beasts and monsters

Recent animal geographies research creates intellectual space for appraising the roles and agency of animals in relation to the human world, but tends to focus on ‘living and breathing’ organisms. What, then, about the place of imagined animals?

Scotland’s folk tradition includes numerous accounts of animals with special powers (hare, bull) and mythical beasts (nuckelavee, wulver, selkie, each-uisage, cù-sith, kelpie and unicorn). The latter – sometimes friendly, often fearsome – have strong associations with specific places (Orkney and the horse-like nuckelavee) and specific environments (often water bodies), and many retain a place in contemporary popular culture.