Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Selkie legends and kayaks

The stories of Inuit kayakers being found in northern Scotland are fascinating. Certainly there were in Norse countries some samples of Inuit kayaks and people brought to Europe by Vikings (here's a link to a discussion of this idea)-- and I wonder just how many people made their own way from Greenland to Iceland or northern Europe...

The stories of selkies fascinate me too. These legendary skin-changers are humans on land, and when they put on their seal skins, they are seals at sea. We have a blog post about Sula Sgeir, home of a selkie in a folksong.

Now I've found a wonderful website on the heritage of the Orkney Islands, which has an interesting page connecting those two fascinating stories. And now I'm off to paddle my own kayak.

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