Ancient Sea Monsters and a Medieval Hero: The Nicoras of Beowulf

Abstract

This article examines the nicor (pl. nicoras) of Beowulf, a type of aquatic monster that appears elsewhere in Old English literature only in the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle and the Blickling Homily XVI. These beasts that attack Beowulf during his swimming contest with Breca and that surround the mere of Grendel and his mother are unfamiliar to modern scholars in terms of their precise nature, being assumed in previous scholarship to be generic water monsters, or hippopotamus-like beasts. Other scholarly suggestions for their underlying influence have been crocodiles and whales. I argue, however, that the nicoras can better be understood as having been influenced by the ancient traditions of the kētos (pl. kētē), the sea monster par excellence of Greco-Roman mythology, which also occupied a prominent place in the Christian imagination. The nicoras in these three Old English texts can be understood, like the dragon of Beowulf, as fantastical creatures that were primarily the product of discernible ancient traditions, rather than generic beasts or purely monstrous versions of real-world animals.