Find a soft seal skin abandoned on a windswept beach, hide it away, and you gain a loyal spouse who can never go home. This deep dive dissects the selkie, the shape-shifting seal-folk of Orkney, Shetland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands, starting with the foundational Selkie Wife tale, classified as migratory legend ML 4080, and the moment the captive finds the key to the sea-kist and bolts for the ocean.

We then go beyond the fairy tale to the psychology, history, and genetics behind it: male selkies who target lonely fishermen's wives, the ritual of seven tears, real families in the Outer Hebrides and Connemara who claimed seal ancestry, syndactyly and ichthyosis in isolated island gene pools, and David MacRitchie's theory that Arctic hunters in sealskin kayaks and anoraks were mistaken for transforming seals.

• The Selkie Wife: a ...