KOPAKONAN-SEAL WOMAN

KOPAKONAN-SEAL WOMAN

KOPAKONANA - SEAL WOMAN

Good Afternoon my dearest friends, followers, supporters, and readers. I have found a way to write a few posts to you all my old desk top windows XVista I was able to get the FireFox brower to work for my Blogger posts unlike my goggle brower for some reason wouldn't work. So for now, as long as it is working I will try to give yu as many post as I can. For as it seems my notebook/laptop will be out for quite a time it seems. As it seems now it might have to be replaced because of all the problems and we have only had the laptop for 3years. The legend of the Kopakonan - the Seal Woman is one of the best known folktales in the Faroe Islands. It was said in the Faroe Islands that the Seals were believed to be former human beings who voluntarily sought death in the ocean.

The beauty of the Selkie

It would seem in the folklore of the Faroe Islands, once a year, on the Thirteenth night of the the month, they were allowed to come on the land, strip off their skins and amuse themselves as their original human forms and dance the night away; enjoying themselves. Well, there is a tale about this of course. In the village of Mikladalur on the northern island of Kalsoy was a young farmer, who was very curious if this legend was true? So he waited for the special night 'Thirteenth night of the month' went and lay in wait on the beach late into the evening. As he watch the ocean waves into the late evening & the moon lite up the water, he started to notice seals arriving in large numbers, swimming toward the shore. All the many if not hundreds of seals clambered onto the seashore, and started to shed their skins all at once. It was amazing sight to see for the young farmer. He watch the beautiful young women each take off their skins then laid them carefully on the rocks. Each of the young girls placed their skins close to a spot where they could find after the dancing and where they thought would be save from on lookers that might try to steal her skin.

Selkies putting her skin on

If that were to happen she could never go home to the sea. The young farmer noticed how divested of their skins were and the woman looked just like normal humans people. The young lad Farmer had seen one pretty seal girl placing her skin close to the spot where he happened to be hiding. Unlucky for the young girl but good luck for the boy. When she felt it was safe, she went to the dance and began dancing the night away. While she was, the boy sneaked up and stole her skin. The dancing & games went on all night, but as soon as the sun started to peep over the horizon, all the seals came to reclaim their skins to return to the sea. However, there was one seal that was very upset because she couldn't turn back into her true form when she couldn't find her skin, though its smell still lingered in the air where she had hidden it. It was gone. Suddenly a man appeared from Mikladalur holding it, but he wouldn't give it back to her , despite her desperate entreaties, so she was obliged to accompany him to his farm.
Sadly the young girl had to keep her human form and went to the farmer's house. She couldn't go back to the ocean with her family. So just as she left she took one last look, as all the seals looked at her and they all cried a sound that only she could understand. He kept her with him for many years as his wife basically against her will. She bore him several children too. However he always make sure that she didn't have access to her skin. He always kept it locked up in a chest to which he alone had the key, a key which he kept at all times on a chain attached to his belt. But the young girl was patience & knew there would be a day that she could run free again in the ocean with her family. So, one day, while the husband was out at sea fishing with his companions, he relised he had left the KEY! at home. He announced to his friends,

Finding the key to the chest

Today I shall lose my wife!' and he expained what he had done. The men pulled in their nets and lines and rowed back to the shore as fast as they could, but when they arrived at the farm, they found the children all alone and their mother gone. 
Their father knew she would never come back, as she had put out the fire and put away all the knives, so that the young ones couldn't do themselves any harm after she'd left.  Indeed, once she had reached the shore, she had put on her sealskin and plunged into the water, where a bull seal, who had loved her all those years before and was still waiting for her, popped up beside her. When her children, the ones she had with the farmer -Mikladalur man, later came down to the beach, a seal would always emerge and look towards the land; people naturally believed that it was the children's mother. And so the years passed on!.

Then one day it happened that the father-farmer & Mikladalur men

Down below into the caverns of the Seals

planned to go deep into one of the caverns along the far coast to hunt the seals that lived there.The night before they all were due to go, the manffs seal wife appeared to him in a dream and said that if he went on the seal hunt in the cavern, he should make sure he didn't kill the great bull seal that would be lying at the entrance, for that was her husband. Nor should he harm the two seal pups deep inside the cave, for they were her two young sons, and she described their skins so he would know them. However, the farmer didn't heed the dream message. He joined the others on the hunt, and killed all the seals they could lay their hands on.
 

Young wife selkie who lost her whole family

This isn't the end of the tale; When the men got home, all happy for their large catch of seal, they divided it all up among one another. Not realizing what curse they had lay upon themself's. As for the farmer he received the large bull seal and both the front and the hind flippers of the two young pups of his seal-selkie wife. Basically he had killed her husband and children of the sea. And all relatives too.In that early evening, when the head of the large seal and the limbs of the small ones had been cooked for dinner, there was a great crash in the smokeroom.Suddenly the seal woman appeared in the form of a terrifying troll; she sniffed at the food in the troughs and cried the curse; 
"Here lie the head of my husband with his broad nostrils, the hand of HBrek and the foot of Fredrik!Now there shall be revenge, on the men of Mikladalur, and some will die at sea and others will fall from the mountain tops, until there will be as many dea as can link hands all round the shores of the isle of Kalsoy!   

When she had pronounce these words, she vanished with a great crash of thunder and was never seen again. Even here human children never saw their selkie mother again. Sadly none of them inherited the selkie power of the ocean.
But to this day, alas, it so happens from time to time,  men from the village of Mikladalur will drown by sea or fall from the tops of mountains & cliffs even today. So the curse contiues on. It must therefore be feared that the number of victims is not yet enough for all the dead to link hands around the whole perimeter of the isle of Kalsoy.

http://www.visitfaroeislands.com/en/be-inspired/in-depth-articles/legend-of-kopakonan-(seal-woman)/

 A statue of the Seal Woman was raised in the Mikladagur on the island of Kalsoy on August 1,

2014. The stature is 2.6 metres long, wights 450 kilograms, and is made of bronze and stainless steel. They made the beautiful statue in honor of the Seal Woman which is designed to withstand 13metre waves. In early 2015, a 11.5metre wave swept over the stature. However, it stood firm and no damage was caused. like that of the selkies.

SELKIE & FIN ONE & THE SAME?

SELKIE & FIN ONE & THE SAME ?

Over the years, and probably because of the way in which the tales were recorded, the Finfolk, Selkirk & Selkie-folk in Orkney came to be regarded as two distinct supernatural races.

They practically became polar opposites. The Selkie-folk said to be beautiful and reasonably

benign, while the Finfolk were dark malevolent creatures.

But when we look further north, to the folklore of Shetland, we find no distinction between the two. The ability to shape-shift into a seal form, for example, was simply one of the many magic magical power saturated to the Finfolk.

This fact that led Orkney's most respected

folklorist and antiquarian, was Walter Dennison.

"Writers on the subject, trusting to incorrect versions of old stories, have often confounded mermaids and seals together,and have treated the two as identical.

Samuel Hibbert in his valuable work on

Shetland has fallen into this error, and has been followed by most others whose

writings on the subject I have seen."

Quoting that his 'old informants regarded the Selkie - folk as a wholly different race of being from the Finfolk", Dennison's

interpretation of Orkney folklore has since become cast in stone.

However, what if these Sheltland tales were

not actually as wrong as Dennison believed, but were actually closer to the original tales a purer strain of lore.

Outside Orkney, in recent years, and

helped along by the advent of the Internet, we have seen a transformation of the Selkie-folk into the New Age spirits of the sea , something at odds to the terror and fear they once inspired in the people of Orkney.

What angelic being would require a mother to paint across on the breast of her daughter before letting her undertake

a sea voyage?

With this in mind, and looking back to some of the fragments of Orkney's earlier, and lesser-known, Selkie folktales, we can catch

glimpses of their original darker, malicious nature.

It is hard to say whether the fragmentation into Selkirk folk and Finfolk tales took place over a long period of time, or was simply the result of interpretation and 'categorization' of later folklorists such as Dennison.

However, either through variations in telling, of shifts in emphasis, the original shape-shifting aspect of the Finfolk [mermaids] became detached, gradually developing until the

islands were left with a distinct race, the Selkirk - folk.

In the same way, it is also possible that these traditions merged with an existing element of Celtic Myth that would explain the existence of the motif down the west coast of Scotland and into Ireland.

So, now we have seen that the Selkirk- folk and the Finfolk were once one and the same, we need to investigate the roots of the Finfolk Mythology to understand the development of the legends.

 

[The picture at the top of the page, of  the seal that 
Looks like a woman- seal is a art pic of a dear friend of my .. -00)]
All the other Artwork is done by Great Artists that I have found Enjoy. Wendy..