Northern mythology

DANISH TRADITIOxVS. 173
Havmanden ' (Danske Viser, i. p. 313), also of two beautiful poems by Baggesen
and Oehlenschlaeger.
In the Faro islands the superstition is current that the seal casts off its
skin every ninth night, assumes a human form, and dances and amuses
itself like a human being, until it resumes its skin, and again becomes a
seal.
It once happened that a man passing during one of these transformations,
and seeing the skin, took possession of it, when the seal, which
was a female, not finding her skin to creep into, was obliged to continue
in a human form, and being a comely person, the man made her his wife,
had several children by her, and they lived happily together, until, after
a lapse of several years, she chanced to find her hidden skin, which she
could not refrain from creeping into, and so became a seal again.
According to the old Danish ballad, a Mermaid foretold the death of
Queen Dagmar, the wife of Valderaar II., surnamed Seier, or the Victorious.
And in the Chronicle of Frederick II. of Denmark we read the
following story "
: In the year 1576 there came late in the autumn a simple
old peasant from Samso to the court, then being held at Kallundborg,
who related that a beautiful female had more than once come to him
while working in his field by the sea-shore, whose figure from the waist
downw^ards resembled that of a fish, and who had solemnly and strictly enjoined
him to go over and announce to the king, that as God had blessed
his queen so that she was pregnant of a son (afterwards Christian IV.),
who should be numbered among the greatest princes of the North, and
seeing that all sorts of sins were gaining ground in his kingdom, he, in
honour of and in gratitude to God who had so blessed him, should with
all earnestness and diligence wholly extirpate such sins, lest God should
hereafter visit him with his anger and punishment."
Tales of Mermaids are most complete in the Shetland isles. There, it
is said, that "they dwell among the fishes, in the depth of the ocean, in
habitations of pearl and coral ; that they resemble human beings, but
greatly excel them in beauty. When they wish to visit the upper world,
they put on the ham or garb of some fish, but woe to those who lose
their ham, for then are all hopes of return annihilated, and they must
stay where they are. Ve-Skeries (the sacred rocks) are a very favourite
place with the fair children of the sea, who, undisturbed by men, here
lay aside their ham, inspire the air of earth, and revel in the clear moonlight.
As ocean's green-haired beauties are mortal, they are often, on
their excursions, exposed to dangers ; examples, indeed, are not wanting of
their having been taken and killed by superstitious fishermen. It has
also happened that earthly men have married Mermaids, having taken
possession of their ham, and thus got them into their power ^" A case
' Hibbert's Shetland quoted by Faye, pp. GO, 61. Thiele iii. p. 51.
edit. 1820.