Are Selkies Real? Orkney Folklore Explained (Trows, Finfolk)

Step into the mystical world of Orkney folklore, a realm of shape-shifting seals, mischievous mound-dwellers, powerful sea sorcerers, guardian spirits and a serpent so vast its teeth became the islands themselves. Shaped by centuries of Norse and Scottish influence and bound tightly to the ever-present sea, these traditional tales are more than entertainment — they explain the landscape, enforce old rules of good behaviour, and record how generations of Orcadians made sense of a beautiful, unforgiving place. Here is a field guide to the creatures that haunt the Orcadian imagination, and where you can still feel their presence today.

Where Orkney's Legends Came From

Orkney's position as a cultural crossroads between Scandinavia and Scotland produced a folklore all its own. Norse beliefs carried by Viking settlers blended with older Pictish ideas, and the result is a body of story that explains natural phenomena, marks dangerous places, and quietly enforces the social rules of a small island community. The sea dominates everything — it gives, it drowns, and it fills the imagination with beings who live just beneath its surface.

None of this was written down for a long time. The tales survived orally, told by the fireside through the long dark winters, and were only gathered into books from the 1700s onward — most famously by the folklorists Walter Traill Dennison and, in the 20th century, Ernest Marwick, whose collections remain the standard references, alongside the modern retellings of Orkney storyteller Tom Muir. Everything below is folklore — told here as tradition and legend, not as literal fact.

Selkies: The Seal Folk

Perhaps the most famous figures in Orkney folklore are the selkies, magical beings who live as seals in the sea but can shed their skins to walk on land as beautiful men and women. Their stories carry a distinctive Orcadian melancholy — they are almost always tales of longing, love and loss rather than menace.

• The stolen sealskin: The most common motif has a man finding a discarded sealskin on the shore and hiding it, trapping the selkie woman in human form. She marries him and bears children, but her yearning for the sea never fades. If she ever recovers the hidden skin, she returns to the ocean and her human family is left on the shore — a bittersweet ending echoed all across the North Atlantic.
• The Goodman o' Wastness: One of the best-known Orcadian versions tells of a scornful bachelor from the West Mainland who steals a selkie's skin and takes her as a wife, only to lose her years later when one of their children innocently reveals where the skin was hidden.
• Selkie men: In tradition the males sought out dissatisfied human women, coming ashore to father children — a folk explanation, some said, for the occasional webbed hand or a family "born to the sea."

Selkies are gentle, tragic figures, quite distinct from the more dangerous finfolk below — though both belong to the world beneath the waves. Watch a common or grey seal haul out on the rocks at dusk, its almost-human eyes following you, and it becomes very easy to see how the legend began.

Trows: Mischief from the Mounds

Orkney's answer to fairies or trolls, the trows are supernatural beings said to dwell inside ancient burial mounds — known locally as "howes" or "knowes." They are creatures of the night, fearing the sunlight that could trap them above ground until dawn.

• Appearance and mischief: Usually described as small and grey-clad, trows love to play tricks — leading travellers astray, souring milk, and sometimes stealing livestock or even babies, leaving a sickly "changeling" in the cradle in place of a healthy child.
• A love of music: Trows have an insatiable appetite for fiddle music. Many tales tell of a local musician "taken by the trows" to play at their revels inside a mound, returning years later having aged barely at all — or, in the darker versions, crumbling to dust the moment they step back into human time.
• Hill trows and sea trows: Lore distinguishes the land-dwelling hill trow from the more grotesque, seaweed-draped sea trow, blamed for foul weather and for stealing fish straight from the line.
• Wards: Trows were said to fear iron and fresh running water — so a nail in the pocket or a stream to cross offered protection to anyone abroad after dark.

Respect for the trows and their mounds was woven into everyday life, and it left a mark on the map. The very name of Finstown and the mounds scattered across the surrounding West Mainland sit at the heart of trowie country, where old habit still cautions against disturbing a "knowe" after dark.

The Hogboon: Guardian of the Mound

Not every mound-dweller was to be feared. The hogboon (from the Old Norse haugbúi, "mound-dweller") was a benign guardian spirit believed to live in a howe close to a farmstead, watching over the family and their livestock. In return for his protection, the household left offerings — most often a share of milk or a bannock, sometimes poured over the mound at festivals.

The relationship was a bargain, and it could sour. In the well-known tale of the hogboon of Hellihowe, a family grew careless with their offerings; the spirit turned from helpful to spiteful, plaguing them so relentlessly that they eventually packed up and moved farm altogether — only to find, as they crossed the hill with their belongings, that the hogboon had hidden himself in a butter-kirn and come along with them. The moral was plain to any Orcadian audience: keep faith with the old spirit of the land, or pay for neglecting it.

Finfolk: Masters of Marine Magic

Distinct from the selkies, the finfolk are powerful, amphibious sorcerers said to inhabit a luxurious undersea kingdom called Finfolkaheem. They are wealthy, beautiful and dangerous in equal measure.

• Abduction: Finfolk were feared for snatching humans, rowing with such supernatural speed that legend claimed they could reach Norway in seven strokes, carrying off mortals to serve as spouses or servants.
• The vanishing island: They controlled enchanted, sometimes-disappearing islands — chief among them Hildaland, which a determined farmer is said to have seized from them using salt and iron crosses, after which it became the real, visible island of Eynhallow ("holy isle") in Eynhallow Sound.
• The finwife's fading: A finwife who married a mortal was said to lose her beauty and magic with each passing year, dwindling into a bent, ugly hag — a grim inversion of the selkie's longing for home.

Though sometimes confused with selkies because of their shared sea-home, the finfolk represent a far more potent and malevolent force in Orkney lore.

The Finn-Men: The One Time Orkney Wrote a Sighting Down

Almost everything above survives only as story, passed along by firesides for generations before anyone thought to write it out. The finfolk are the exception — because in the 1680s a minister in Kirkwall recorded a sighting not as a tale, but as something that had happened.

The Rev. James Wallace, minister of Kirkwall, noted in his manuscript that "Finmen" had been seen in Orkney waters. One was watched from the shore in his little boat off the south end of Eday, and slipped away at remarkable speed when the islanders launched a boat to intercept him. Another was seen off Westray, and his arrival was blamed for the fish deserting the grounds. Wallace died in 1688, and the account reached print in 1693 as A Description of the Isles of Orkney — the first known appearance of the word "Finnmen" in a published book.

That theory was added in the editing. The 1693 edition was seen through the press by Sir Robert Sibbald, who inserted the suggestion that these were people "that dwell about the Fratum Davis" — the Davis Strait, between Greenland and Baffin Island — and propped it up with supporting citations and a reference to a kayak then held in Edinburgh. As the historian Jonathan Westaway has traced, an Orcadian note about something strange on the water was quietly converted, by an editor who never went there, into what looked like documentary proof of Inuit paddlers in Scottish seas. Modern scholarship treats that Inuit reading as a construction of early-modern print culture rather than an established fact.

Which leaves the interesting part unresolved, and that is rather the point. Orkney already had the finfolk — sorcerers who rowed with such speed that legend said they could reach Norway in seven strokes. Whatever the islanders actually saw, they had a ready-made category waiting for it. The folklore did not need explaining away; it was the lens through which the sighting was seen in the first place.

The Stoor Worm: The Serpent That Made the Isles

The grandest of all Orcadian tales belongs to the Mester Stoor Worm, an enormous sea-dragon whose foul breath could wither crops and whose appetite demanded a weekly sacrifice of seven maidens. In the story — a full hero-legend of the kind Tom Muir has retold for modern readers — a farm boy named Assipattle rows a burning peat into the monster's gullet, setting its liver ablaze from the inside.

What makes the tale so beloved in Orkney is its ending: as the dying serpent thrashes and burns, its teeth fall out to become the islands of Orkney, Shetland and the Faroes; its curled-up body becomes Iceland, with the fires of its burning liver still smouldering beneath as that country's volcanoes. It is, in other words, an origin myth — the islands themselves are the remains of a slain dragon.

Mither o' the Sea and Teran: The Battle of the Seasons

Behind all these individual creatures sits a larger idea — that the sea itself has a temperament, governed by two opposing spirits locked in an eternal seasonal struggle.

• The Mither o' the Sea is the benevolent spirit of summer, credited with calming the waters, warming the seas, and filling them with life. Her strength grows through spring until she overpowers her rival at the Vore Tullye — the "spring struggle" — and rules the gentle months.
• Teran is her adversary, the wild spirit of winter storms. As autumn turns, he gathers his power and defeats the exhausted Mither at the Gore Vellye, binding her beneath the waves and unleashing the gales that batter Orkney through the dark half of the year.

It is a strikingly elegant piece of folk-meteorology: the deadly winter storms and the calm bright summers of the Northern Isles, explained as two spirits forever wrestling for control of the water that surrounds every Orcadian life.

Nuckelavee: The Skinless Terror of the Isles

The most terrifying creature in all of Orkney folklore is the Nuckelavee, a horrific sea demon associated especially with the island of Stronsay but feared across the whole archipelago. Its appearance is the stuff of nightmares.

• Form: A grotesque fusion of horse and rider as a single skinless entity — raw muscle and black blood visible through yellow veins, a single burning red eye, and a gaping mouth breathing toxic vapour.
• Malevolence: Its breath was said to wilt crops, spread the livestock plague known as mortasheen, and bring drought. Any sighting was a terrible omen.
• Its one weakness: A deep fear of fresh running water. Crossing a stream was the only reliable way to escape it — and, in tradition, the Nuckelavee was kept at bay through the summer only because the sea-spirit the Mither o' the Sea held it captive.

Its legend clusters around periods of hardship and strife — notably the 18th-century tensions over kelp-burning on Stronsay, whose acrid smoke was said to enrage it. The Nuckelavee likely fuses Norse water-spirits (the Nøkk) with Celtic horse-demons like the kelpie, into something wholly Orkney's own.

Orkney's Folklore Creatures Compared

Seven beings, and the differences between them matter — Orcadians would not have thanked you for confusing a selkie with a finwife. This is the whole cast in one place.

Where to Feel the Folklore Today

These tales still shape Orkney's sense of itself, and there are real places where they feel close to the surface:

• The mounds of the West Mainland: The howes and knowes around Finstown and the Stenness lochs are trowie country — walk them at dusk and the old caution makes instinctive sense.
• Literature: Writers such as George Mackay Brown and Eric Linklater wove selkie and trow motifs through their work, keeping the legends alive on the page.
• Storytelling: The Orkney Storytelling Festival and year-round fireside sessions carry the oral tradition forward, told aloud the way they were always meant to be heard.
• Community identity: More than anything, the folklore reinforces a distinctly Orcadian identity — Norse-rooted, sea-facing, and unmistakably its own.

More on the chilling tale of the Nuckelavee:

Frequently Asked Questions

Are selkies real?

No. Selkies are folklore, not biology, and no seal has ever been found to shed its skin. The legend almost certainly grew out of the seals themselves — their large, dark, oddly human eyes, and their habit of hauling out on the rocks to watch you watching them.

Are selkies dangerous?

No. In Orkney tradition the selkies are among the least threatening beings in the whole folklore — they raise no storms, spread no disease and drown nobody. The cruelty in a selkie story almost always runs the other way: it is the human who steals the sealskin and keeps her ashore against her will.

Are selkies good or evil?

Neither. The tales don't treat them as moral creatures at all. A selkie wants one thing — to get back to the sea — and the story's tension comes from a person standing between her and it. If you want genuine malice in Orkney lore, look to the finfolk and the Nuckelavee instead.

What powers do selkies have?

Just one, in the traditional Orcadian tellings: the change itself. A selkie sheds its sealskin to take human form, and puts it back on to return to the sea. No spells, no weather-magic, no sorcery — all of that belongs to the finfolk, who are a separate people entirely.

How long does a selkie live?

Orkney tradition doesn't say. The selkie stories are about longing and return, not lifespan — they end when the sealskin is found again, not when the selkie dies. No figure appears in the Orcadian sources, and it is more honest to leave it there than to invent one.

What is a trow?

A trow is Orkney and Shetland's version of a fairy or troll — a small, grey, nocturnal being said to live inside ancient burial mounds ("howes"). Trows are more mischievous than evil, best known for stealing musicians away to play at their revels and for a deep aversion to iron and sunlight.

What's the difference between selkies and finfolk?

Both live in the sea, but they are very different. Selkies are seal-people — gentle, tragic, longing for home. The finfolk are amphibious sorcerers from the undersea kingdom of Finfolkaheem: wealthy, powerful and feared for abducting humans. In short, selkies inspire sympathy; finfolk inspire dread.

What is Finfolkaheem?

Finfolkaheem is a place, not a creature — the finfolk's kingdom on the sea floor, described in the tales as a lavish hall of gold and crystal lit beneath the water. The finfolk are its people. If you have met the word on its own, that is what it refers to.

Is the Nuckelavee related to the Loch Ness Monster?

No. They come from different regions and traditions entirely. The Nuckelavee is a specifically Orcadian sea demon — a skinless horse-and-rider that spread plague and drought — and has no connection to the lake monster of the Scottish Highlands.

Where can I learn more about Orkney folklore?

The Orkney Library & Archive in Kirkwall holds extensive folklore collections, and the retellings of Tom Muir and the classic gatherings of Ernest Marwick are the best places to start reading. To hear the tales as they were meant to be told, time a visit around the Orkney Storytelling Festival.

Orkney's folklore is a window into the islands' soul — a world where the lines between the human, natural and supernatural were always fluid. Knowing the stories adds a whole layer of meaning to the landscape. Consider a stay in traditional Orkney accommodation to feel, first-hand, the atmosphere where these legends were born.