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Selkies are mythical female figures who live as seals in the ocean but transform into gorgeous humans when shedding their seal skin.

One day, a Selkie falls in love with a human fisherman and has a baby with him. After the baby is born, the Selkie steals her seal skin back and swims back to the ocean.

While the above version is the Irish tale—the most commonly known version of the story, there are multiple variations of the story of Selkies.

In the Icelandic version, the Selkies are human women who have suicided and thus become seals in the sea. There is also a much darker version of the story: One day, the Selkie brings her kid (who is also somehow a Selkie) in the form of seals to swim back to the fisherman. However, the fisherman, not knowing they are returning, hunts for seals, who are in fact his wife and kid, and eats them all.

The tale of the Selkies also inspired modern media productions, like the 2014 animation film Song of the Sea.

Context: The interviewee learned this folktale after watching Song of the Sea in 2014 and became curious to find out the original story the film’s plot is based on. She then searched up the Irish version of the story online, while also learning its variations.

Analysis:

Domestic Roles: The Selkie’s story, at its core, reflects the tension between one’s true self and their performance of specific domestic roles, and the cost of choosing one over the other. For example, in the tale, the seal skin is a symbol of the Selkie’s true self, and the ocean symbolizes where she belongs. However, the “human world” is where she performs her domestic roles as the wife of the fisherman and the mother of her child. Selkie’s longing for the sea and stealing her seal skin back becomes a coded articulation of desires for autonomy. However, in this story, choosing one over another (true self vs. domestic roles) has certain costs: choosing to go back to the ocean—to her true self—means leaving her children and family.

Death and Liminality: In the Icelandic Version, where Selkies are suicided women, carries the idea that death is not the termination, but rather a metamorphosis—human women who have suicided continue to exist, just in a different form, apart of the human world.