Selkies: The Seal People of the Northern Isles

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Selkies are folklore, so most claims on this card are labelled Traditional: they describe what the stories say, not anything that happened. The collection of the stories by folklorists is documented.

The section "The real seals" is natural history, drawn mainly from The Handbook of British Mammals, 3rd edition (1991). It describes the animals the islanders lived beside. It is not offered as an explanation of the stories, and population figures in it are 1991 history, not current counts.

The stolen skin

traditional The best-known selkie story goes like this. A young man walking on the shore at night sees seal people dancing, their skins laid on the rocks. He steals one, and when the dancers flee to the sea, one beautiful woman is left behind, unable to go. She becomes his wife and bears his children, but she is always sad and often looks at the sea. One day, one of her children finds the hidden skin and shows it to her. She puts it on and returns to the sea, sometimes looking back at her family, but never returning. In some versions she brings fish to the shore for her children.

Selkie men

traditional Male selkies were said to be handsome and to come ashore to seduce human women, often women unhappy in their marriages or lonely while their husbands were at sea. In Orkney it was said a woman who wanted to meet a selkie man should shed seven tears into the sea.

The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry

established The ballad "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" was recorded in Shetland in the nineteenth century and published by Francis James Child as number 113 in his collection of ballads. In it a woman nursing her baby is visited by the child's father, who says, "I am a man upon the land, I am a silkie in the sea." He takes the child, and foretells that she will marry a gunner who will shoot them both.

Seal ancestors

traditional Some families in the Hebrides and Northern Isles were said to be descended from selkies. The MacCodrums of North Uist were known in Gaelic as Clann 'ic Còdrum nan ròn, "MacCodrums of the seals". Such families were said to have webbed fingers or a special bond with seals, and were reluctant to kill them.

Interpreting the stories

shared Folklorists have suggested several sources for selkie stories: the human-like eyes and behaviour of seals; encounters with skin-clad Sámi or Inuit people in kayaks; and the experience of women who married into communities far from home. The stories often deal with captivity, longing and divided loyalties. These are interpretations, and the stories probably have many roots.

Fallen angels of the sea

shared Island tradition also gave the seal people a Christian origin. A Shetland account quoted by the historians Lizanne Henderson and Edward J. Cowan, in Scottish Fairy Belief (2001), says that when the angels fell from heaven, "some fell on the land, some on the sea"; those on land became the fairies. Henderson and Cowan add that the ones that fell into the sea were often said to be the seals. The same fallen-angel explanation of the fairies was recorded in Barra by Alexander Carmichael, and by the minister John Brand on his visit to Orkney and Shetland in 1700. In this tradition seals and fairies belonged to one family of fallen beings.

Selkies today

established Selkie stories have inspired many modern writers and artists, including David Thomson's The People of the Sea (1954), stories and poems by the Orkney writer George Mackay Brown, and films.

The real seals

This section is natural history. It describes the animals behind the word "selkie", as recorded in The Handbook of British Mammals (1991), and is kept separate from the folklore above.

established Two species, one name. Scotland has two resident seals. The grey seal is the larger, with a long, "Roman-nosed" head; adult bulls are half as large again as cows and can reach about 2.3 m. The common seal, called the harbour seal in North America, is smaller, with a rounded head and a shorter muzzle. The Handbook, in accounts by S. S. Anderson (grey seal) and W. N. Bonner and P. M. Thompson (common seal), records "selkie" or "selchie" as a Northern Isles name for both species. It also gives the Gaelic ròn mòr, "great seal", for the grey seal and the obsolete Shetland names haaf-fish (grey seal) and tang fish and black seal (common seal).

established Where they live. In 1991 the Handbook put Britain's grey seals at about 99,500, the bulk of the eastern Atlantic population. The largest numbers were in the Outer Hebrides (about 44,500, at sites such as the Monach Isles, Gasker, Haskeir and North Rona) and Orkney (about 32,500), with about 9,000 in the Inner Hebrides and 3,500 in Shetland. Grey seals breed on exposed rocky coasts, in caves and on uninhabited islands, where they may spread over the whole island: on North Rona they climb to about 80 m above the sea. Common seals favour sheltered waters, sea lochs, sandbanks and the shores of small islands. In the 1970s and 1980s counts gave about 6,600 in Orkney, 4,700 in Shetland, 4,500 in the Inner Hebrides and on the west coast, and 1,300 in the Outer Hebrides. These are dated figures; numbers have changed considerably since.

established Seasons ashore. The two species breed at opposite ends of the year. Common seals pup in June or early July, mostly on intertidal rocks and sandbanks, and the pups can swim almost from birth. Grey seals gather on their breeding islands in autumn. Around Britain pupping runs clockwise, from September and October in the south-west, to October and November in west and north Scotland, and November and December on the Isle of May. Grey seal pups are born in a white coat, which they shed after two or three weeks, and are fed for 16 to 21 days on milk that is more than half fat. Then the mother is mated and leaves.

established Changing coats. Both species moult once a year. Common seals moult from mid-July to September; grey seal cows moult between January and March and bulls between March and May.

established Voices and habits. Grey seals are vocal: the Handbook notes that females hiss, snarl, hoot and moan, and bulls can make a throbbing sound in the throat. Common seal pups call to their mothers with an almost human "waa waa" cry. Common seals often "bottle", resting upright in the water with the face above the surface, and may lie hauled out on Orkney rocks at any state of the tide, by day or night. Both species have good eyesight in water and air, and grey seals have been recorded breeding successfully while blind.

established Faithful to place. Tagging shows that about 70% of grey seal pups stay in the general area where they were born, and breeding adults return to the same site year after year, sometimes to within metres of the previous year's spot. Some pups wander widely: pups tagged on North Rona have been found in Iceland, Ireland and Shetland.

established Hunted and protected. The Handbook notes that grey seals were "hunted extensively in past". In the twentieth century hunting centred on pups taken for their skins. Common seal pups were hunted for skins in Shetland, Orkney and the west coast in the 1960s, and the Shetland population fell in the 1960s and 1970s before recovering under protection. Common seal skin was still used for sporrans. Grey seal pups were culled in Orkney from 1962, followed by an annual quota, and a late-1970s plan to reduce Scottish grey seals to early-1960s levels was not carried out after protests. Legal protection began in 1914. By 1991 the Conservation of Seals Act 1970 gave close seasons for both species, common seals were protected all year in Shetland, and no licences for commercial hunting had been issued in Britain since the late 1970s.

established Seals and fishermen. Grey seals take fish from salmon nets, especially at netting stations on the east coast of Scotland, and the Handbook records that shooting was then the only effective control. It also notes research suggesting that reducing seal numbers would be unlikely to raise fish catches.

• "Selkie" comes from the Scots word for seal.
• A selkie wife must return to the sea if she finds her skin.
• The MacCodrums of North Uist were said to be descended from seals.
• In Orkney, seven tears in the sea were said to summon a selkie man.
• "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" is Child Ballad 113.
• In northern Scotland "selkie" has been used for both the grey seal and the common seal.
• Grey seals on North Rona have been recorded hauling out about 80 m above the sea.
• Common seal pups call to their mothers with an almost human "waa waa" cry.

• Myth: selkies and Orkney's finfolk are the same beings. The finfolk are a distinct tradition.
• Disputed: where the selkie stories come from. Folklorists have pointed to the human-like eyes and behaviour of seals, encounters with skin-clad Sámi or Inuit people in kayaks, and the experience of women marrying into distant communities. These are interpretations, and the stories probably have many roots. Island tradition also gave the seals a Christian origin as fallen angels.
• Disputed: whether the natural history of seals explains the legends. The facts about grey and common seals describe the animals the islanders lived beside. They do not settle the meaning of the stories.
• Disputed: how many seals there are. The population counts given here are from the 1970s, 1980s and 1991. They are history, and numbers have changed considerably since.