Kópakonan (The Seal Woman)
In the village of Mikladalur, standing on wave-worn rocks, is a bronze statue of a beautiful woman shedding the skin of a seal. She is Kópakonan (The Seal Woman)....
The Seal Woman myth is the most well-known story amongst Faroe Islanders. As the story goes, seals were once humans who had taken their own lives at sea. One magical night each year, the seals could come on land, strip off their skins, and dance and celebrate as human beings.
A young farmer from Mikladalur decided to go and watch this celebration and
immediately fell in love with one of the young women. At that instant, he decided to kidnap her, marry her, and start a family – which he did. However, the farmer needed to be cautious, for he knew that if the woman could ever put her seal skin back on, she would become a seal again and disappear into the sea. Therefore, to keep her from escaping, the farmer locked the young woman’s seal skin in a chest and kept the key on a chain attached to his belt.
One fateful day, the farmer was out fishing with his friends, when he realized with horror that, he had left the key at home. He rushed back to find that the trunk was open, the seal skin was gone, and his wife had disappeared. The wife had become a seal again and was joyously reunited in the sea with her seal husband and her seal kids.
Years passed, and the night before the farmer was to go on a seal hunt, his former seal wife appeared to him in a dream and warned him that he might come across her seal husband and children during the hunt and begged him not to kill them. The farmer didn’t heed her request and slaughtered both the seal husband and the children. As part of his share of the seal meat, he took home the husband’s head and the children’s flippers. That night, the farmer was confronted by the seal woman, who had taken the form of a hideous troll, and she cursed him and all of the men on the island for his actions. She proclaimed that some (men) would die at sea and others would fall from the mountain tops until there be: as many dead as can link hands all round the shores of the isle of Kalsoy!’
She then vanished with a clap of thunder and was never seen or heard from again.
Today, the seal woman’s curse still takes victims as now and again, men from the village of Mikladalur drown at sea or tumble to their deaths from the cliffs. Given that these deaths still occur, it is surmised that the number of victims has not yet reached the point where the ancient curse will be lifted.
