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SWIMMING HISTORY 32 APRIL !"!# | Outdoor Swimmeraaa0067e-a8ab-449b-bd64-4cceb84a8f41 outdoorswimmer.com SWIMMING HISTORY returned by inquisitive, eerily human eyes,” the Windsor Library notes. Over time, the concept of the selkie evolved into a mostly benign seal- human amalgamation. In the ocean, the creature is a seal. But when it hauls out of the sea, usually around the summer solstice, the animal can shed its seal skin and walk upright as a dazzlingly beautiful human. “Once ashore, the selkie-folk would cast o" their magical sealskins Leg!nds "f to become human, and bask in the sun on lonely stretches of sand,” the Library reports. “If the sealskin was lost, or stolen, however, the creature was doomed to remain in human form until the skin could be recovered, for it was the only way for the selkie to return to its original form, and hence to its home in the sea. Because the skin was so precious, selkies would hastily snatch them #he Selkies up and rush back into the safety of Tales of part-seal-part-human ‘seal folk’ the water if someone disturbed them while they were on land.” have long been part of northern European !e legends state that male selkies have remarkable powers of seduction, folklore. Elaine K Howley explores the stashing their sealskins in a safe place and making their way inland to bed enchanting stories of selkies and Finfolk human lovers. In search of unsatis$ed women, the selkie men pursued their that dwell mostly under the sea prey, with no regard to the marital status of the target. Women who disappeared while at sea or who were lost to the incoming tide were said to variety of tales related to transformed them into a semi- have run o" with a selkie man. selkies (part-seal-part- mythical race shrouded in mystery Selkie women, for their part, human creatures) populate and darkness,” the Windsor Library are also stunningly beautiful, the mythology of many reports. A classic story of a dominant though they’re typically cast as less Anorthern, coastal regions – Ireland, group “other-izing” people di"erent sexually voracious than their male Scotland, Iceland, and Denmark. And from themselves. counterparts. !ey’re also subject to these stories largely derive from tales As Norwegian sailors pushed the brutality of land-based men. of the Finfolk in Gaelic and westward in their expansion to the “Selkie lore is full of tales of Norse mythology. islands to the north and west – Iceland, cunning young men acquiring a According to information provided the Faroes, Orkney, and the Hebrides selkie-girl’s sealskin by the# or deceit. by the Windsor Public Library in – they brought stories of the Finnar !e poor creatures would be le# with Ontario, Canada, these legends trace with them. As happens with folklore, no choice but to marry their captors,” their roots back to the Sami people over centuries of retelling, the Finnar the Windsor Library reports. of Scandinavia, an indigenous and eventually shape-shi#ed into the !is distressing aspect of the nomadic people who roamed across Finfolk, a race of people who were as mythology harkens back to an era the northern-most parts of Norway, much at home in the sea as on land. when women were forced to rely Sweden, Finland, and Russia. “!e shape-shi#ing element of the on men for their existence. “How !e Sami lived separately and quite Finfolk detached and further evolved consensual can these marriages be di"erently from their Norwegian into a separate race of skin-shedding when he’s holding your skin hostage?” contemporaries. As pagans who selkie-folk,” the Windsor Library Levinson asks. practiced a shamanistic religion, reports. Selkie is the Gaelic word for O#en, these stories end with one the Sami’s near-magical powers and seal, and seals are a common sight of the selkie’s children discovering connection to nature elevated them from the various lands where the the hidden seal skin and the selkie to the status of sorcerers and became Vikings settled. “It’s quite common immediately returning to the sea. known as the Finnar of Old Norse for people on the shore to look out Sometimes the children go with her, mythology. Fearful of their natural over the water and see seal heads other times they remain behind to abilities, “Norwegian imagination bobbing above the waves, their gaze look a#er the human father. outdoorswimmer.com aaa0067e-a8ab-449b-bd64-4cceb84a8f41Outdoor Swimmer | APRIL !"!# 33 SWIMMING HISTORY THE LEGEND OF KÓPAKONAN Sometime later, the !sherman and vengeance on the men of Mikladalur, In !e Legend of Kópakonan, the his mates plan a seal hunt to a nearby cursing some to die at sea and others selkie Kópakonan comes ashore cave. "e night before the trip, the to fall from the mountaintops that in the village of Mikladalur on the !sherman dreams of his selkie wife rim the village. She vanishes with a Faroe Islands. !ere, she’s forced into who warns him not to harm the great boom of thunder. marriage by a farmer who hid her seal bull seal at the entrance to the cave or "us, anytime a man from skin in a locked chest. He keeps the the two seal pups at the back of the Mikladalur drowns or falls from a key with him night and day and for cave, as these are her husband and cli# top, it’s said to be the work of the many years, she’s his prisoner-wife, sons. But the man does not heed the vengeful selkie Kópakonan. In August producing several children. warning, and all three seals are killed 2014, an exquisite bronze statue of One day, he discovers while !shing and cooked. Kópakonan was erected along the that he’s forgotten to bring the key. He No sooner has the farmer sat down shore in Mikladalur to commemorate rows back home as quick as you like, to his seal meal than his selkie wife her tragic tale. but his wife has already recovered comes roaring into the house in the her skin and departed, diving under form of a terrible troll. She vows STORYTELLING BEFORE SCIENCE the waves to return to her ancestral Stories help us make sense of the home. She leaves her world, and in the earliest days of human children civilization, before we had things behind. like Hadron colliders and genetic testing, people relied on storytelling to explain mysterious scienti"c phenomenon. In addition to being a way of explaining another people’s otherness, selkie myths may also have been a way for Northern European people of old to make sense of certain other biological facts they didn’t have the vocabulary or instruments to fully explain or understand. In many of the selkie myths, the children of selkie-human unions are born with webbed !ngers or other physical traits that mark them as di#erent from ordinary children. And indeed, the genetic condition called syndactylism—in which a piece of skin joins two or more digits that can make the hands or feet appear webbed—could be the base origin of some of these tales. Another condition called ichthyosis is a genetic skin disorder that causes patches of skin to harden and appear scaly like a !sh’s exterior, which could also be an aspect of life the selkie myths sought to explain. "e seal skins Inuit hunters – so- called Finn-men – used to make clothing and kayaks in the northern regions may have also added to the storyline. For people who were not part of that culture to make sense of what they were seeing, they may have resorted to telling the stories that have since become our seal-human selkie myths. LOVE YOUR SELKIES FROM A SAFE DISTANCE Open water swimmer Sam Levinson, aaa0067e-a8ab-449b-bd64-4cceb84a8f41 outdoorswimmer.com 34, of Boston, Massachusetts, !rst their babies and that’s disastrous.” discovered she was a selkie a decade Instead, if you’re headed out to a or so ago when a friend started calling place where there’s seal activity, bring her one. “She knew I was part Irish a camera with a good zoom lens or and just started calling me her selkie. binoculars and observe from afar. And I thought about it and it !t.” And show your love of our aquatic Levinson, who’s training for a solo brethren with the big, soulful eyes all-butter!y English Channel crossing by advocating for improved policies in 2023, loves seals and the water, and regarding #shing gear. “Fi$y per has had a few encounters with the cent of the ocean’s plastics are from curious and friendly animals while #shing gear and seals get tangled in scuba diving in California and them all the time,” Levinson explains. Puget Sound. “It breaks my heart to see my people Levinson calls the part-seal-part- entangled in #shing gear.” human mythical inhabitants of If you’re in the water and a seal northern European aquatic climes initiates contact – as one did in “her people.” "e discovery of this Monterey Bay with Levinson a few alternative identity led Levinson on years back when she was scuba a journey of discovery through the diving, making something of a meal mythology of the selkie, and the more of the !ippers she was wearing – don’t she learned, the more enchanted she be afraid. "e harbour seals that are became with the stories. And the common in UK waters are far more convinced she became that she friendlier than sea lions is in fact a long-lost member of the and unlikely to hurt selkie tribe.

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