“A handsome grey horse waits by the water, and the moment you climb on it bolts for the deep.”
The nykur waits where Iceland's water turns black: beside the ponds locals call bottomless, and the deep cold lakes between farms. It looks like luck — a handsome dapple-grey horse, saddle-broken and patient, standing where no horse should be. Two things give it away: it will not let anyone inspect its hooves, which point backwards, and once a rider is up, there is no getting down.
Whoever mounts sticks fast to its back, and the nykur makes for the deep at a dead run. Its weakness is its own name. Hearing 'nykur,' 'Nennir,' or any word that resembles them, it shies, bucks and bolts back into the water alone — which is why generations of Icelandic children learned that a well-placed word beginning with N is worth more than a bridle. In winter, the boom of lake ice cracking was explained as the nykur's neigh.
The Legend
The trap is patience. The nykur presents itself as a beautiful, tame horse to travellers and children far from help, lures them close, and lets them mount; skin touches skin and holds like tar. Then it runs for its pond and dives, drowning the rider. Faroese tradition, which shares the creature, says even touching its tail is enough to stick fast. Its shape is not fixed — accounts allow it to appear as a salmon, a bull or a fish — but the grey horse with reversed hooves is its favourite lie.
The classic escape is a story about laziness rewarded. A shepherd girl, finding a fine grey horse standing conveniently near, made ready to mount — then sighed, 'Eg nenni ekki á bak' ('I can't be bothered to get on'). At the word 'nenni' the horse started as if struck, galloped into the lake and vanished: it was a Nennir, and she had said its name without knowing. Failing 'nykur,' tradition recommends its other names — Nennir, Nóni, Kumbur, or Vatnaskratti, the 'water-devil.'
The Record
The nykur was set down in the nineteenth-century folk-legend collections of Jón Árnason and his successors, under a small herd of recorded names — Nennir, Ninnir, Flóðhestur, Skolli, Vatnaskratti and more — and it left its name on the land itself, in nykur place-names scattered across Iceland. The collectors also preserved its natural history: it moves between lakes, most likely on New Year's Eve, and its scream foretells a change in the weather.
The tradition is not Iceland's alone. The nykur descends from the water-horse of the wider Nordic world — kin to the Faroese nykur, the Swedish brook horse or bäckahästen, and the Scottish kelpie — part of a family of drowning-horses that folklorists have tracked across the North Atlantic. Iceland's telling leans hardest on the name-taboo: the monster undone by its own syllables, fleeing the sound of what it is.
The Lore
Belief supplied countermeasures. Carving a cross into its back gives a person power over the beast; making the sign of the cross while mounted, or invoking God, breaks its run — a method held especially effective in the East Fjords, where the nykur was reckoned the devil in disguise. Church bells and holy water repel it, a fire kept burning beside its lake for a full day forces it to move house, and puncturing the swelling under its left shoulder is said to tame it, for a while.
The nykur even breeds. Put to an ordinary mare in water, it sires foals that carry the flaw of their father: they lie down and roll when ridden across deep water. Fog was its hunting weather, and the deep booming of lake ice on winter nights was its voice. The creature has since become a fixture of Icelandic bestiaries and folklore tourism — but the old advice stands: check the hooves, and keep the letter N ready.
Field Notes
- ✦ Telltale sign: its hooves point backwards, and it refuses to let them be inspected.
- ✦ Hearing its name — Nykur or Nennir — or any word like them sends it bolting back to the water.
- ✦ Akin to the Scottish kelpie and the Scandinavian brook horse.
- ✦ The boom of cracking lake ice on winter nights was explained as the nykur's neigh.
- ✦ Its foals, sired on ordinary mares, betray themselves by rolling when crossing deep water.
Case File
- Classification
- Shapeshifting water horse
- Category
- Shapeshifter
- Territory
- Lakes and 'bottomless' ponds throughout Iceland
- First Sighted
- Traditional Icelandic folklore
- Habitat
- Bottomless ponds and deep lakes
- Reported Size
- Large dapple-grey horse; can change shape
- Also Known As
- Nennir · Water horse