09/04/2026
Is the Pictish Beast the Loch Ness Monster?
You might have noticed that we have a couple of designs that feature this enigmatic, slightly strange, but undeniably cute little beastie from Pictish Scotland. Jim even has one tattooed on his arm!
This creature is found on the Pictish carved stones of Scotland, and is shown in a consistent form that is recognisable as the same beast throughout its various appearances. This makes it different from the other fantastical creatures that appear in the Pictish school of stone carving, as they usually appear only once, on one stone.
This makes the Beast part of the corpus of Pictish symbols which were used across the carved stones of the 6th to 9th century, meaning that the people of that time would have understood what this symbol referred to, and that it was carved to express this meaning. Unfortunately, given that the Picts didn’t leave us a key to the symbols, any modern interpretations of their meanings are just that, modern interpretations. No matter how convinced we may be by their validity.
When it comes to interpretations of the Pictish Beast, any discussion usually centres around deciphering which animal it is meant to represent. With suggestions ranging from it being a dolphin, to an elephant!
We see this beast as definitely being a water creature, given that its limbs are very obviously flippers, rather than legs. And we doubt that it was intended to represent a dolphin, as these would have been familiar to the Picts, who had ships and were very capable of navigating around the coastlines and waterways of Early mediaeval Scotland. They may even have been intimately familiar with the anatomy of a dolphin, as dolphins are very edible. This should have been enough for them to realise that they have small flippers and a fluke-like tail, whereas the Beast has a tail more like that of a dog or cat.
The head of the beast does have a beak-like mouth, which does look a little like a dolphin, but it also has a lappet on the top of its head. It has been suggested that this could represent the blowhole of a dolphin, but to us this looks more like the lappets that can be seen in other forms of early mediaeval animal art, such as the Jelling style from Scandinavia.
This leads us to the conclusion that this beast is intended to represent a mythological creature, and Jim has a theory: the Pictish Beast is the Loch Ness Monster!
Now, bear with us here, the logic for this conclusion goes as follows: the earliest recorded sighting of a creature in the vicinity of Loch Ness, in the Highlands of Scotland, comes from the life of St. Columba, written by Adomnán in the 7th century. In this account the saint encounters a water beast in the river Ness, that connects Loch Ness to the sea. This creature had mauled a local man to death, so Columba sent one of his followers to swim across the river, to draw the beast out. When it appeared, the saint made the sign of the cross, and told it to go away, and it did.
This account is often recognised as the first mention of the Loch Ness monster.
These kinds of incidents are often found in the hagiographies of saints, think of St. George. They are intended to demonstrate the saint’s godliness and piety, especially in the face of pagan forces. On this visit to the highlands, Columba was working on converting the Northern Pictish Kingdom to Christianity, so it is reasonable to suggest that the water beast incident, which presumably never really happened, given the continuing absence of any evidence for a large water beast in either the river Ness, or Loch Ness, follows this form of the saint defeating the forces of ‘evil’ with his godly power.
However, and this is where we take a bit of an inferential leap, maybe the ‘water beast’ that Columba encountered on the River Ness was the Pictish Beast carved on the symbol stones. It is from the same period in which this story is set, and, as mentioned above, it does seem to be a water based creature. It also seems to be entirely mythological, like the beast Columba frightened away, and the later Loch Ness monster.
Could it be that the beast was a Pictish water spirit? A kind of local pre-Christian deity? In a land like Scotland, with many Lochs, and regular rainfall, water, and large bodies of water, would have been very important to the early mediaeval peoples living there. So maybe the beast was a manifestation of the power of water in the everyday lives of the Picts? One that was important enough to be depicted on stone carvings across Pictish territory.
Of course, there are many traditions of creatures living in Lochs around Scotland, the Kelpies, and Selkies being two that are known from more recent folklore, but this would be a larger, more important creature. Perhaps something more akin to the Jormungandr of Scandinavian mythology, with an equivalent place in the Pictish pantheon.
This could add some context to the Columba story, where the saint was actually engaged in spiritual warfare against a native cosmology that possibly included god-like entities who inhabited large bodies of water. And through this spiritual warfare, significant members of a mythological pantheon, whose influence and veneration ran throughout Pictish society, were degraded from the status of gods to being considered more like ungodly monsters that were a threat to life and limb. In this later form, as a monster, to be hunted, and essentially bound to the realm of the mundane, this powerful mythological entity became a creature of folklore. Known only to us now as the Loch Ness Monster.
Well, it's a theory. Backed up with only very circumstantial evidence that relies on particular interpretations of the available facts. But we will never know the reality for sure, unless there is a lost Pictish manuscript that explains what all the symbols actually meant, hidden away somewhere just waiting to be found. But that seems unlikely at this point, so all we really have are theories, and there are plenty to go round.
Which is your favourite?
