Adam Dahmer - PhD Celtic Studies
The selky myth seems to have fulfilled numerous roles in
medieval Hebridean, Orcadian, and Shetlandic societies. Likely the oldest of
these was its use as a means by which to mitigate feelings of bereavement for
relatives lost at sea. Because they depended on the treacherous waters of the
North Atlantic for their livelihoods, both Gaelic and Norse islanders in
medieval Scotland lived in constant peril of drowning. The belief that lost
mariners might have sheltered with or transformed into selkies could have lessened
the emotional anguish of their passing for those who survived them.
As a coping mechanism for grief, the selky myth could
address not only deaths at sea, but also deaths in childbirth. The narrative
archetype of the selky wife provided a ready explanation for the widower whose young
child was curious about its absent mother. The notion of a connection between
the selky and maternal death is reinforced by the fact that in stories of the
selky wife, it is often the selky’s child who alerts her to the whereabouts of
her seal skin, inadvertently instigating her sudden departure from the family
just as a newborn might unknowingly bring about its mother’s untimely demise. The
selky skin—with its irresistible ability to separate mothers from their
children and wives from their husbands—might itself be a metaphor for death.
Imbalances of power between various entities—not only death
and the mortal—play a central role in the selky mythos. One such relationship explored
in the selky myth is that between the seal and the seal hunter. Medieval Orcadians,
Shetlanders, and Hebrideans had four compelling reasons to hunt seals: the animals
competed with islanders for fish; sealskin made excellent waterproof clothing; seal
oil could serve as lamp fuel, topical medicine and a waterproofing agent for
clothing and boat sails; and seals themselves were edible (Ní Fhloinn 1996). Strangely,
alongside the tradition of seal-hunting and the practical incentives that
maintained it, there was also a taboo against killing seals, and an entire subgenre
of selky stories dedicated to its enforcement. The taboo against seal hunting thus
enforced, although observed to varying degrees according to region and
historical epoch within Gaelic- and Norse- speaking areas, may have served an
important ecological purpose in the Middle Ages, ensuring that grey seals were
never over-hunted.
Selky stories might have served not only to protect the
environment, but the interests of married women. The male selky of Orcadian and
Shetlandic fame had a reputation as a talented lover, who could offer women a
temporary distraction or a permanent escape from a loveless marriage to a cruel
or controlling husband. He was also reputed to be extremely virile, and could
therefore have served as a convenient scapegoat in the event of unexpected
pregnancy. Even the tales of female selkies captured and forced into marriage
by fishermen might have aimed at the promotion of women’s rights; almost invariably,
the selky-wives in these stories escape their captivity, leaving their one-time
captors to care for their children alone. This subgenre of selky stories might
therefore have been morality tales, reminding husbands that ill-treated wives could
desert their abusers, and empowering abused women to do exactly that.
To the extent that the selky emblematizes the female hope of
sexual and personal empowerment, it also embodies the masculine fear of sexual
and personal inadequacy. The narrative of the captured selky wife in some ways provides
an apt metaphor for medieval marriage—in which the female partner often
acquiesced to social, familial or economic pressure to marry rather than
robustly and eagerly consenting to the union. Under these circumstances, a
husband might well feel that he had somehow tricked or coerced his wife into
their marriage. His feelings of guilt and insecurity would only have deepened
with contemplation of the male selky; by virtue of being a supernatural
creature, the selky-lover surpasses his human rival in all respects. He is
stronger, more attractive and self-confident, more competent in the arts of
love, and able to easily navigate the depths of the ocean—a realm into which
the fisherman can only peer from the water’s surface. He lives effortlessly and
stays warm and well-fed in the wintertime despite his sloth. And yet, despite
his superior fishing skills, the seal still insists on stealing the fisherman’s
catch. By analogy, the selky ashore would surely feel similarly inclined to alienate
the affection of the fisherman’s wife. The selky myth therefore reflects the medieval
husband’s deep-seated suspicion that his wife only loves him from a sense of
duty, and that if she could, she would not only run away from him, but into the
arms of his archrival—which, in the medieval fisherman’s case, was the seal.
Interestingly, the selky myth has also been used as a means
by which to overcome feelings of inadequacy. Numerous Scottish, Irish, and
Orcadian families—including the families MacCodrum, Connolly, Kane, Rogers,
O’Shea, and O’Dowd (MacDougall 1994) —historically claimed descent from
seal-people (Ní Fhloinn 1996). Oral tradition has often suggested that some
members of these families were occasionally born with webbed hands and feet, or
with fingers grown together so that their hands resembled flippers. (Ní Fhloinn
1996). In light of the selky myth, such congenital anomalies—traits which under
other circumstances might have been perceived as deformities—could instead have
been interpreted as proof of the families’ much-touted selky ancestry.
An examination of the selky myth reveals it to be more
complex than one might at first suppose, in terms of both its origins and
cultural significance. It is liminal, straddling the frontiers of medieval
Gaelic and Norse culture in the same way that the seal people themselves can
traverse both land and sea but can be confined to neither. It reflects the
harsh realities of life for preindustrial people forced to depend for survival
upon one another and the sea and helped them preserve the delicate balance
between the interdependent but opposing forces that sustained their existence.
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