A selkie is a shapeshifter that moves between seal and human form by removing or putting on its seal skin, a figure deeply rooted in the Celtic and Norse folklore of Scotland's Northern Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Orkney, and Shetland. The word "selkie" comes from the Scots term for seal and survives in spellings such as silkie, sylkie, and selchie.
The most widespread tale is that of the female selkie. A man steals and hides the skin she has shed on the shore and takes her, now unable to return, as his wife. Through her years as a human she longs ceaselessly for the sea, and once she recovers the hidden skin she abandons her human family and returns to the water, typically never coming back to land. Male selkies, said to be very handsome in human form and gifted with seductive power over women, are described as seeking out those dissatisfied with their lives, such as wives waiting for fishermen husbands.
Several explanations have been proposed for the origin of the tradition: the misidentified sight of Sámi or Finnish women in sealskin kayaks, encounters with Inuit ("Finn-men") removing their waterlogged clothing, shipwrecked dark-haired Spanish sailors, or drowned souls supernaturally transformed into seals. In each account the selkie remains a being that belongs wholly to neither the sea nor the land.