Monsters, identity and shared culture

I think I first heard of the Loch Ness Monster when I was about five years old. From the perspective of an inquisitive child, the monster legend was appealing. So many people reporting the same thing? Such a long-lived legend? A mysterious creature, possibly related to dinosaurs (I had already discovered dinosaurs through a very good little book about palaeontology), living in a deep, dark, mysterious lake? For the five or perhaps six-year-old me, this was compelling. What was perhaps more compelling still was the descriptions of people who tried to find it; the accounts of interviews and other attempts were vivid, and the entire thing sounded like an adventure.

Who wouldn't want to understand the mysterious? And while little me was interested in whether the monster existed, I was also drawn to people themselves.

Why do some people experience things that others don't? Do people lie about what they experience and if so, when and why? Can we always be sure of what we experience?

Those are questions that probably explain why I became an anthropologist when I grew up. No one with that kind of interest is likely to end up in another career, and if they do, it's probably so they can earn a good wage to, you guessed it, finance their actual interests and pursuits.

This last weekend, one of the biggest hunts for Nessie, the supposed inhabitant of Loch Ness in Scotland, took place. What is really interesting is that while there have been many searches over the decades since the monster became "popular" in the 20th century that never yielded conclusive proof, the articles state hundreds of people from all over the world have joined the search this time around.

Nessie, it turns out, is famous around the world...and somehow, despite there being many other water and land monsters, creatures and beasties reported globally, her legend draws people to Scotland just as much as they are likely to search for a local monster...arguably even more, for the sake of her international fame, appeal of Scotland in general or maybe that most important part of all things human - contact with a group of like-minded people.

Because whether or not you believe in the beastie, whether or not you are there to see something unexplained or partake in a fun challenge, the monster story is a part of self and group identity once you look at it through anthropological eyes.

It's hard to say how many supposed lake monsters exist in the world today, or how many may have existed in the past. Wikipedia, of course, makes a bold attempt at listing them and many people, believers, sceptics and those in between have tried to discuss or explain the monsters as a fact, a piece of fiction or a cultural phenomenon for likely about as long (the second link I gave you is to one such Wordpress article). For the record, I'd say I sit somewhere between sceptics and those in between, because it is impossible not to. While I totally agree with the writer of the article I linked on how we may simplify cultural beliefs of others (including our own ancestors) and adopt them and then morph them into something else through time, I am also aware that that in itself could have happened at a previous date, on a previous occasion or several, to a culture that then cross-polinates another. So can mistaken identity, freak animal sightings (eg animals that are in poor condition or sick can look very different from what we know; so can extremely large or small animals of a species we know well) and animals that find themselves somewhere they are usually not present for one reason or another. Then, of course, there is our zoological knowledge. While it's pretty darn good, it's not perfect. Even today, we still find new species and, indeed, animals where they weren't expected to be, for any number of reasons. Needless to say this could have happened at an earlier date too. Nature is a living thing, after all. So I remain open-minded in general terms. Do I truly believe that a giant prehistoric creature inhabits Loch Ness and that its cousins perhaps inhabit others? Logically, no. But is there a teeny, tiny piece of me that is open to the romantic of not knowing big secrets of the world around us? I'd be lying if I said no. I am human after all.

That aside, the popularity and the ease of adopting these legends, and the way they inspire group connection and self identification is highly intriguing to my anthropological self. I believe the popularity of even supposedly dangerous creatures - Nessie is presented as cuddly nowadays, but historically, she'd been known to attack at least one swimmer, and other monsters have definitely been known to do the same in many myths - is about that connection.

A monster is an outsider, an ultimate Other. In a way, it is and it is not of this world; it may be presented as an anomaly or an exception, and indeed I think the way we often see cave and water deities and spirits appear in many mythologies around the world supports this - even when they are revered, perhaps faithfully and perhaps cautiously, they may be considered dangerous, unpredictable and definitely not exactly the run-of-the-mill creatures. (Spirit worlds, for instance, may be a part of the world within the cultural landscape, but are not exactly a part of the physical world in the simplest form.) How we react to them, how we relate to them, may be how we deal with Otherness in general, or a specific Other, but it is still how we deal with Other. Additionally, such a monster is a sort of glue for the community. We, all of us, have a specific relation to the Other it represents. From the Nessie-related perspective, this identity is pretty clear. Even if you are a sceptic, you are sceptical about Nessie. That means you have heard the stories, presumably looked at the evidence and formed an opinion (and, some would probably joke, would likely be the first to be eaten if this were a horror film). And this relation to the myth can be found everywhere the story had travelled, linking people around the world together. Think about it - we may be very different, we may have very different roots and worldviews, but this, this one story, is the same for us all, no matter which category we fit into.

Importantly, the Nessie myth is also a brilliant example of sharing culture. This act of forming own and group identity transcends all. It is a piece of initially arguably Scottish culture (arguably because I would have to do some very careful digging and comparing of who said what first and what ethnicity they were and how the myth evolved over the ages - knowledge I simply do not have at present) that has travelled around the globe, and at the same time, as it strengthened, created definite Scottish culture connected to the myth locally, whatever the origins of the story. It is now an immutable part of local living, and not a tiny one either - Nessie brings some 41 million yearly to Scottish (overall and of course local) economy.

Would Scotland be worth it without Nessie? Absolutely. It is a beautiful place of many other legends but also of amazing cultural and natural history and untold archaeological treasures. But to me, Nessie is, in its own way, a form of intangible cultural heritage, which presents worth of its own.

That's a big bold claim, and I'm sure many will disagree, and they're welcome to. A part of the argument about what we deem to be cultural heritage is undoubtedly its "worthiness". Nessie can be easily dismissed as somehow unworthy...just a tale to attract tourists perhaps. But...literally all currently listed pieces of physical cultural heritage - and I am willing to bear any amount of argument over that claim - are essentially tourist lures. The whole point, I would say, of cultural heritage is to recognise and share it...and one part of that is to partake by learning about it and observing it. The true reason behind something being worthy is also often how "serious" we can be about it. But this, again, is a socio-cultural perception. What is seriousness? Is a legend serious? It is certainly a part of someone's culture. (Which forms an uncomfortable question - when are we just not culturally aware enough and when, if ever, is it right to try to classify or indeed dismiss a part of someone's heritage, especially if no harm is being done to anyone through commemoration or practice of that particular piece of heritage, and if it definitely matters to the society in question?) Is it more or less serious than archaeological finds? And by the point we begin to consider intangible culture as heritage, who decides what it heritage, what is, ultimately, culture, and which part of it is it that deserves recognition?

Age is often an expected part of how we list something as heritage. But that gets complicated with intangible heritage, because, especially where few or no material culture pieces exist to authenticate a particular time frame, how long something has existed becomes anyone's guess. And there, we often meet with bias; culture has importance overall, and how long a part of it has been present may or may not actually be equatable with its current, past or future significance in the society itself, not to mention all this may be hard to prove in material terms. Nessie as a legend has roots in Early Middle Ages. Arguably, this makes it "old enough". But the legend as we know it, with all the sightings and their significance, is arguably a lot more modern. So what's the verdict there?

For me, the verdict is in significance, and significance over time. Let's look at it like this - the Nessie legend most certainly pops up in the Early Middle Ages, which gives us very old roots. It is then reimagined in the 20th century and leads to what we know now. Nowadays, the significance of the legend and its presence in both local culture in some manner as well as its recognition abroad cannot be denied. Indeed, the Scottish people take the whole matter quite seriously. There is even a plan in place for the eventuality something does get discovered in the lake. The bid for the lake to be included by UNESCO also included the monster myth. In my eyes, intangible and tangible history are vastly more important, complex and connected than we often give them credit for, and I think the willingness with which we interact, even internationally/interculturally with legends, the impact they may have on local wellbeing and of course the identity we create and re-create through sharing in this piece of culture shows just how much that may be the case.

There may be nothing in the water. But the search, the banter about it, the way we form identity around it...is as real as any rock carving, any stone building, any lullaby and any food recipe. It is not only real to those who live it, one way or another, be it as a curious tourist or indeed a sceptical local who nevertheless recognises the myth every day when they sell Nessie memorabilia. It is real to all those who share knowledge of all this, both the legend and how it is shared around the world. And maybe, just maybe, the legend itself and the way we share it is worth more than ever finding out for certain what started it.