The Honest Truth: Why sea monsters are still making waves

As the Scottish Maritime Museum celebrates some of the fantastical and legendary creatures once thought to lurk in oceans around the world with events and exhibitions, researcher Adam Flynn tells Jayne Savva the Honest Truth about sea monsters.

What is it about sea monsters that compelled you to study them?

Monsters are inherently interesting because they are all, essentially, reflections of ourselves – often, of our own fears, anxieties, and desires.

The creation of monstrous beings can be understood as a major and tenacious form of cultural expression that reveals a great deal about the attitudes and beliefs of the societies that made them. The strong presence of monsters in almost every culture throughout history speaks clearly to their considerable importance.

Is a monster, by definition, any specific sort of being?

The term monster is, and always has been, a broad and highly mutable one.

In the medieval and early modern periods, it was used to designate anything that diverged from the ordinary course of nature, and that was somehow beyond, or stood in opposition to, what was deemed normal.

This might include physically deformed births, such as conjoined twins; socially unacceptable human types, such as witches; massive creatures of the sea, such as whales; or rare and exotic terrestrial animals, such as rhinoceroses.

From centuries of sea monsters, can you pick a favourite?

The so-called Sea Monk, which is mentioned in the current exhibition, was a supremely odd creature whose existence was much debated for centuries.

A half-man, half-fish hybrid, it was purportedly sighted off the coast of Denmark in 1546, bearing a humanoid head, a scaled body in the shape of a monastic habit, and a large pair of tentacles in place of arms. It was first described in a 1553 text by the French naturalist Pierre Belon, and thereafter figured prominently in a vast array of illustrated works throughout the early modern period.

Did the Sea Monk have any basis in reality?

On account of the creature’s peculiar shape, some modern scholars speculate that the Sea Monk was, in fact, a giant squid, or most likely an angel shark. Others have proposed that it was, in reality, an example of a “Jenny Haniver” – a fake, man-made monster, assembled from the various parts of skates and rays crudely stitched together, and fashioned into the shapes of devils and dragons.

Personally, I remain largely unconvinced by these different suggestions, and see the question of the Sea Monk’s reality as less important than the question of why people of the past were so deeply captivated by it.

What is the connection between narwhals and mythical creatures?

For a long time, it was widely believed that narwhals – marine animals – were, actually, unicorns. Unicorn horns, which were, in fact, narwhal tusks, were highly prized and extremely costly, in part because they were believed to act as potent anti-toxins, capable of counteracting the effects of poison.

Moreover, for those who possessed them, unicorn horns offered tangible, if fragmentary, links to these marvellous creatures, deeply embedded within popular mythology.

Can you explain our enduring obsession with sea monsters?

Part of the reason why sea monsters exert such a powerful fascination over us is that they represent the limits of human knowledge.

On medieval illustrated maps, for example, uncharted areas of the globe tend to be replete with fearsome, if unavoidably alluring, sea creatures. This was partly in order to discourage explorers from travelling to as-yet-unknown regions.

Are sea monsters real?

In a sense, yes. As one scholar put it: the monster is known through its effect. The fact, already mentioned, that travel to certain distant lands was actively inhibited by the strong belief that various kinds of monsters actually dwelled there, clearly shows the capacity of mostly unknown, unseen beings to have real, tangible effects on humans, and to make their presence felt in the real world.

Sea Monsters!, Scottish Maritime Museum, Irvine, until October 31