Did Norse mermaids
swim to Scotland?
A
letter to the editor of
The
Times
newspaper on 9 June
1809 contained a startling
revelation. It was from WM
Munro, a schoolmaster
from Thurso in northern Scotland, who
claimed he’d spotted “a figure resembling
an unclothed human female” while out
walking. The creature had fish-like lower
parts, he wrote, and it wasn’t just a
product of his fertile imagination – many
other locals had seen mermaids too.
“Folk stories about sea people are still
told in the Scottish Hebrides,” says author
Elisabeth Gifford, whose debut novel
Secrets of the Sea House
features the
discovery of the bones of a mermaid child
and is based on the tale of Munro’s sighting.
“All kids know the stories of the ‘selkies’,
the magical seal women who step out of
their skins to become human,” she says.
The mermaid mystery has never been
solved, but research by Scottish historian
and folklorist John MacAulay suggests
Norwegian involvement. In his book
Seal-
Folk and Ocean Paddlers
he argues that
the fish-like people were most likely Sea
Saamis, indigenous people from Norway’s
northern fjords. He believes that they
reached Scotland in rudimentary kayaks,
using parkas made from sealskin to
keep warm. Their sealskin leg covers, he
concludes, would have looked very similar
to mermaid tails.
When the Sea Saami were assimilated
into the general population of Vesterålen,
just north of Lofoten, 200 years ago, the
mermaid sightings in Scotland stopped –
their explorations had apparently reached
an end. Links between the Saami and
Scotland remain unproven, but MacAuley’s
research suggests some Saami may have
skipped the return leg and settled in
Scotland. “There might be descendants
of mermaids walking among us and living
quite happily,” concludes Gifford.
Elisabeth Gifford’s
Secrets of the Sea
House
is published by Corvus on 6 August
The unsolved mysteries of the Sea Saami inspire a new novel
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