The Sealskin

Sounds like they're having fun. I'd better steal something.

It's snowing today, so I thought we'd look at a tale from Iceland. The Sealskin is a tale of love, loss, and of course, seals.

I cannot help but feel badly for the woman in this story. She comes on land to party and, when she can't go back home, is abandoned by her friends and ends up following a stranger home. The story has no details about how the man courted her, but either he did something right or she was desperate because they got married and had seven kids. This clearly wasn't her plan. Once she is able to get her sealskin back, the woman turns back into a seal and never becomes human again.

Stories like this show a lot about how women were treated in the time and place this tale comes from. She ended up loving her children on land, as she says, and at least liking her husband enough to get him fish every day. However, the fact that when she has a choice, she does not come back on land shows that she wasn't happy there. She had children in the sea before she had some on land. She had a life, but some guy's curiosity pulled her away from that and kept her away for several years. And it's not depicted as anything terrible, or even bad. It's just shown as something that happened. I enjoy the look into culture that these stories give us, but I don't always like what I find.

The moral for this story would have to be: Even when you're partying, keep an eye on your sealskin so some jerk doesn't steal it.