Written by: Anna Swan (novel)
 

STORY

The story is supposedly about the lord of Wastness. He was a very handsome man and all the girls on the Orkney islands had a crush on him. But he did not like them all, he wanted a special girl. He felt alone and often walked down the beach. Then one day he saw a group of selkies play. They all had shed down their skin. One of the girls was so pretty that he fell in love and took her skin. Fast as they are the selkies took off when they saw the young man but one was left behind. She begged the lord to give back her skin. He felt pitty for her but he was too much in love to give her skin back. She refuses to come out of the water for days, but slowly falls in love with him too. She decides to give him a change. They marry but on the wedding night she finds her skin and can't resist putting it back on and goes back to the ocean where her husband follows her to get her back. She does not want to go back to the land and swims away. In an attempt to hold her the man falls in sea and drowns for she is too late to see her husband is drowning. Then she takes him below and gives him a resting place.
 
 

INTERESTING FACTS

  The rumour started to float in December 2001 that Disney is developing a project based on a story written by a Finnish writer Anna Swan about selkies.

  Selkies are shape shifting sea fairies usually in the form of bright-eyed seals. According to the legend, they are localized in Northern Scotland and the Shetland Islands. Selkies often come on to land in human form, where they would dance, especially on the night of the full moon. In taking human form the Selkies shed their sealskin, and hide them in a safe place. There are many tales from the clans of leaders taking Selkie wives by stealing their skins. The Selkies are said to make good wives but always long for the sea, and return to their seal form if they gain repossession of their skins. The selkies can be identified in their human form by their webbed fingers and toes and their ability to swim underwater for long periods of time.

  Several sites provide more details on this legend: The Selkie Folk, Selkies: Fae of the Sea or A Home for Selkies.

  According to a March 2002 rumour, Selkies should be the next feature to be produced in Florida. Its traditional animation and sketches have been made and shown to the suits, though Selkies has not been greenlit yet.
 
 

THE MYTH OF THE SELKIES

Taken from The Selkie Folk.
 

The term "selkie" is simply the Orcadian dialect word meaning "seal". As such selkies are a very common sight across the islands of Orkney. Heads bobbing above the surface of the waves, they are most often seen watching inquisitively with uncannily human eyes. To the onshore observer it is not hard to see how the legends surrounding the selkie-folk sprang into life.

Orkney has many stories concerning a magical race of creatures known locally as the "selkie-folk" - the seal people. Unlike the Finfolk, the selkie-folk were generally regarded not as malicious creatures but rather gentle shape shifters with the ability to transform from seals into beautiful, lithe humans.

Throughout the gathered lore there is no general agreement as to how often this magical transformation could take place - in some tales it was once a year, usually on Midsummer's Eve - referred to as Johnsmas Eve - whereas in others it was "every ninth night" or perhaps "every seventh stream".

However often they were able to transform, the folklore tells us that once in human form the selkie-folk would dance merrily on the moonlit seashore or bask on outlying rocks or skerries.

A common element in all selkie-folk tales, and perhaps the most important, was the fact that when the selkie assumed human form, they shed their seal skins. Within these magical skins lay the power to shapeshift back into seal form so these had to be guarded at all costs. If one of the selkie-folk lost a skin, they were doomed to remain in human form until the magical skin was found again.

Because of this, if disturbed during one of their midnight shore dances, the selkie-folk would quickly snatch up their skins before rushing back to the safety of the sea.

The male members among the selkie-folk were renowned for their many encounters with human females - married and unmarried.

A selkie man in human form was a handsome creature with almost magical seductive powers over mortal women. These selkie-men had no qualms in casting off their seal-skins, stashing them carefully, and heading inland to seek illicit intercourse with an "unsatisfied woman".

Should such a mortal woman wish to make contact with a selkie-man, there was a specific rite that she had to follow. At the high tide, the woman should make her way to the shore where she had to shed seven tears into the sea.

The selkie-man would then come ashore and after removing his magical sealskin, sought out unlawful love among the women of the island.

In the words of the Orkney folklorist Walter Traill Dennison, these selkie males:
 

"..often made havoc among thoughtless girls, and sometimes intruded into the sanctity of married life."

If a girl went missing while out on the ebb or at sea, it was inevitably said that her selkie lover had taken her to his watery domain - assuming, of course, she had not attracted the eye of a Finman.

But if the males of the selkie race were irresistable to the island women, selkie females were no less alluring to the eyes of the earth-born men.

The most common theme in selkie folklore is one in which a cunning young Orcadian man acquires, either by trickery or theft, a selkie-girl's seal skin. This prevented her from returning to her home in the sea and the beautiful seal-maiden was usually forced to marry their "captors" and sire children.

These tales generally end sadly, however, with the selkie-wife's children finding and returning her sealskin so that she might return to the sea. In some accounts her children go with her while others have them remaining with their mortal father.