Stronsay Beast

In the autumn of 1808 the decomposing carcass of an enormous creature was washed up on the rocks of Stronsay in Orkney. Measured at some fifty-five feet long, with a small head, a long serpentine neck and what looked like a mane and three pairs of fin-like limbs, it astonished all who saw it. Sketches and sworn descriptions were sent to Edinburgh, where the Wernerian Natural History Society declared it a previously unknown animal and gave it the grand name Halsydrus pontoppidani — 'Pontoppidan's sea-snake', after the Norwegian bishop who had once catalogued the monsters of the deep.

The London anatomist Sir Everard Home soon poured cold water on the claim, arguing the remains were those of a large basking shark, whose cartilaginous body rots into just such a deceptive long-necked shape — the same decay that has produced 'sea serpent' carcasses the world over. Modern opinion agrees it was a basking shark, though even so a giant of perhaps thirty feet. Yet the Stronsay Beast endures in Orkney lore as the islands' own sea-monster — a vivid moment where folklore, natural history and the romance of the unknown all washed up together on a northern shore.