This 9 ft bronze statue of Kópakonan (The Seal Wife) was installed in the Mikladalur Harbor on Kalsoy, one of the Faroe Islands, on August 1st, 2014. The legend of Kópakonan (the Seal Woman) is one of the best-known folktales in the Faroes. Seals were believed to be former human beings who voluntarily sought death in the ocean. I felt the entire legend 'come to life in this shot with mist behind her head and the feeling that she's walking toward you while shedding her seal skin.
This statue about the seal woman is that the seal elves are mythological creatures in the folklore of Ireland, Scotland and the Faroe Islands. It is said that the seal elves live in the sea in the form of a seal. After the seal is removed, they can transform into a human form and live on land. Seal girls who become humans are usually black-haired beauties with a mermaid-like singing voice, so men are often attracted to them.
The stories of the seal elves are usually romantic tragedies. According to legend, the seal elves that have turned into a human form can only return to the sea and become a seal if they wear back the sealskin. Moreover, the human-shaped seal elves can only get along with one person for a short time, and then have to return to the sea, and cannot contact that person for seven years, unless the person steals her seal skin, hides it, or burns it.
Therefore, sometimes if a man likes a seal girl but has no time to get along, he will steal her seal skin, prevent her from returning to the sea, and force her to become his wife. Then hide the sealskin in the future married life so that the wife can stay by her side.
The seal girls are rumored to be good wives and mothers, but because their real home is the sea, they are often seen gazing at the sea with emotion. If the seal woman or her child helps her find the seal skin (the child usually does not know the role of the seal skin), she will immediately abandon her husband and children and return to the real home, sometimes with her husband in the sea. Seal girls returning to the sea usually avoid seeing their human husbands again, but sometimes they visit the children and play with them in the waves.
In other tragedies, sometimes a person does not know that his partner is a seal spirit, and wakes up to the surprise that his partner has changed back to a seal form.
