Selkies are seal people of Scottish, Irish and Faroese folklore. The word is Scots for seal. They live as seals in the sea but can take off their skins to become human on land, and most of the stories come from Orkney and Shetland.
In the most common tale, a man finds a seal-woman's skin on the shore and hides it, so she has to stay and marry him. She is a good wife, but always looks to the sea, and when she finds the skin years later she goes straight back to the water. Male selkies are said to be handsome and to seek out lonely women; in Orkney a woman could call one by shedding seven tears into the sea. The ballad 'The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry' tells of a seal-man who fathers a child with a human woman. In the Outer Hebrides the MacCodrum clan were called 'the MacCodrums of the seals' and were said to descend from a selkie, which was used to explain webbed fingers in the family.
In the Faroe Islands the legend of Kópakonan, the seal woman, tells of a young farmer from Mikladalur on Kalsoy who stole a seal-woman's skin on the one night of the year when seals were said to come ashore and shed their skins. A 2.6 m bronze statue of her by Hans Pauli Olsen was unveiled on the shore at Mikladalur on 1 August 2014.
What the stories say
- A seal that watches people from the water for a long time
- A sealskin hidden in a house or on the shore
- A stranger with webbed fingers
- Seals gathering on a beach on a special night
Famous cases
- 2014Kópakonan seal-woman statue unveiled
Mikladalur, Faroe IslandsIn 2014 a large bronze statue of Kópakonan, the 'Seal Woman', by Faroese sculptor Hans Pauli Olsen was placed on the shore at Mikladalur on Kalsoy, where the surf sometimes washes over it. It marks the best-known Faroese selkie legend, set in the village, and has become a major tourist attraction.
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