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..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New - Legends & Selkirks 2014

NEW 
LEGENDS 
&
SELKIRKS
2014

Selkirk's are creatures that live and are found in Faroese, Icelandic Ireland and Scotland.

They are able to become human by taking off their seal skins and can return to a seal form by returning to the sea with their seal skin that they usually leave in a hidden spot near caves by the ocean where humans can't find them.

Stories concerning Selkirk's are generally romantic

Tragedies...

Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a

Selkie and will wake up the next morning to find them

Gone!

Other times the human [Usually male] will hide the female

Selkirk's skin, thus preventing them from beginning able

to return to their seal form and into the sea. And of

course their true families.

A Selkirk can only make contact with one

particular human for a short period of time, before they

must return to the sea.

They are not able to make contact with that human

again for seven years, unless the human has stolen their Selkirk's skin and hidden it or even some have burn some...!

In the Faroe Island there are two version of this

Story: The Selkirk's or Seal Wife.

A young farmer from the town of Mikladalur on

Kalsoy island goes to the beach to watch

the Silkies dance. He hides the skin of one of the

beautiful Selkirk maidens, so she can't go back

into the seas with her other sisters and forces her to

marry him. The Farmer keeps her skin in a chest and always keeps  the chest locked. And the key with him both day and night.

Although there is one day when he is out fishing, he discovers, 

that he has forgotten to bring this key to the chest. When 

he returns home, his wife of many years, that was the 

young maiden Selkirk dancing on the beach had escaped

back to the sea, leaving their children behind. Later, when

the farmer is on a ocean hunt, he kills her Selkirk husband and the two Selkirk sons they had together. She of course promises to 

take revenge upon the men of Mikladalur. 

This is what the curse of the Mikladalur Men 

fell to because of their actions:

"Some shall be drowned, some shall fall from cliffs

and slopes and this shall continue, until so many 

men have been lost that they will be able to link 

arms around the whole island of 

Kallsoy! 

Male Selkies are very handsome in their human form

and have great seductive powers over female women.

They typically will seek those who are dissatisfied with

their romantic life. This includes married women waiting

for their fisherman husbands too!

If a woman wishes to make contact with a

Selkirk Male, all she has to do is just go to the

beach and shed seven tears into the sea.

If a man steals a females Selkirk's skin, she is in his power,

to an extent and she is forced to become his wife - a regional

variant on the motif of the swan maiden, unusual in that the breeds animal form is usually a bird.

In legend the Female Selkie are said to make

excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea,

they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean.

If  she finds her skin again, she will immediately

return to her true home, and sometimes to her

Selkie husband,in the sea.

Sometimes, a Selkirk maiden is taken as a wife by a human

man and she has several children by him.

In these stories, it is one of her children who is the one who

discovers her sealskin and she soon will take the sealskin

from her child and return to the sea.

Sometimes she will tell her half/Selkirk children

what she is and where her true home is, but this

only happens rarely.

Usually the Selkirk will avoid seeing her human child but she

sometimes will if she had a strong connection

with them. As for the human husband they will never

have any contact with them ever again , but their children

they might see them when they are close by the

ocean or swimming in the sea or even sometimes

will play with them in the waves.

Silkies are not always faithless lovers.

One tale tells of the fisherman Cagan

who married a seal-woman. Against his wife's wishes he

set sail dangerously late in the year and was

trapped battling a terrible storm, unable to return home.

His wife shifted to her seal form and saved him, even though this meant she could never return to her human body and hence her happy home.

Some stories from Shetland have Silkies luring islanders

into the sea at midsummer, the lovelorn humans never return to

dry land. Seal shape-shifters similar to the Selkie

exist in the folklore of many cultures too.

ORIGINS:

One theory of the origins is the belief is that the Selkirk's were actually a fur-clad Finns, traveling by kayak. Another is that a shipwrecked of Spaniard washed ashore and their jet black hair resemble seals. "As the anthropologist. A Asbjorn Jon has recognized though, there is a strong body of lore that

indicates that Selkirk's are said to be supernatural formed from the souls of drowned people."

There is other theories and stories that are related to

The Selkie and other seal-people.

These are "The Great Silkier of Sule Skerry and

the movie the Secret of Roan Irish.

In the Secret of Roan Irish, it about a fisherman

who steals the Selkirk's pelt while she is sunbathing.

She is then forced to return to his house, as she cannot escape

back to the sea, and becomes his wife and bears him children.

The skin of the seal give her power over men, but without it she

is a mortal woman, trapped on land and a slave to the whims of her

husband. The life there slowly suffocates her and she

spends much of her time splashing in the shallows of the ocean.

Years later, one of the children sees the pelts and asks what is this?

The wife immediately knows, drops what she is doing and

retrieves the pelt from the its hiding place, where her child has

shown her. Having long ago despaired of ever finding it.

She does not hesitate; Not even a word to her children. She

rushes to the ocean to return to her former life as a

Seal..

Wendy... 



I hope you like the Updated Selkie post
with a couple of great viedos' too
Wendy:o

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The oringin of the Sellkirks

Mermaids Forest

Mermaid Forest-

Yuta falls asleep under a tree Mana

goes to play with a kitten she found.

When Yuta wakes up, he can't find Mana

anywhere and finds out that there was a

accident and a young girl was hit by a car.

Yuta goes to the doctor's office where

Mana was supposed to have been taken,

and the doctor told Yuta that Mana was

not seriously injured and had left. When

Yuta STILL Can't find Mana, he realizes

that something is very wrong and follows

the doctor up to a huge mansion where

all sorts of strange things have been

happening over the decades.

Two women lived there, the ancient Sawa

and the youthful, but ill Towa. The old woman

Sawa is actually the twin sister of Towa,

who appears to be several decades younger.

Sawa was given control of the

family legacy, "Mermaid Hill," a hill where

the corpse of a mermaid was supposed to be

buried. Sawa found out that eating the body

of a mermaid could bring immortality or

turn a person into a monster. Sawa

desired immortality, and decided to test

out some of the mermaid's blood on her

fatally ill sister, Towa. Sawa figured that

since Towa was her twin, anything that

happened to her was likely to happen to

Sawa also. Towa and her dog both ended up

taking the mermaids blood because of Sawa,

and Towa's hair instantly turn white and her hand

turned into a "lost soul's" lost soul.  Towa remained

young-looking on the outside, although she was aging and

dying on the inside. Her hand often

began to pain her, so she would acquire the corpses of

gijrls who had died and cut off the girls' arms [and her own]

and then reattach the new "human" arm to herself which

would instantly heal. However, the human arm would only

last for a while. Then it would turn black into a claw.

Mana was hit by a very large truck and "died" when she ran across the road while Yuta was sleeping. She was

taken to the doctor's office and the doctor, not

knowing that Mana could come back to life, took her up

give to his fiancée toward who used the arms of recently dead

girls to replace her own mutated one.

When Mana came back to life at the mansion,

she shocked everyone. She surpised

them even MORE when she revealed that

she had eaten mermaid's flesh and was immortal.

Towa began to plan on going to use Mana to her

advantage, but Mana was too innocent to understand

that Towa was anything else but a kind woman, completely

fooled by Towa's façade. Mana spends her days as a

"guest" at the mansion wondering why Yuta has not

come for her yet. Mana did not realize that he

was already there...but Towa had "taken care"

of him already...

This is an Japanese Story of folklore . When I first

posted it I really didn't understand the story. I still don't but

I have a little better idea of the story. Its a little creepy in a weird kinda  way. I am interested in what you all might think? Wendy =ooo)