Ringsted Inspiration

This is my last Little Selkie themed post. Usually I don’t have a fourth discussion post, but I put so much work into my research for this part of the book, I can’t NOT speak of it!

As some of you caught on, Ringsted is inspired by Irish and Scottish cultures. I mostly relied on Irish resources, but a few Scottish aspects crept into the story as well.

The decision to base Ringsted off Ireland was a tough one. Usually I try to base the cultures of my fairy tale lands on the cultures that launched the original stories. That’s why Arcainia of The Wild Swans has a German feel to it, and Trieux of Cinderella and Loire of B&B seem more French. (The story of Rumpelstiltskin is so widely told its origins were much harder to track down, but there was a Norwegian version, hence the Norwegian culture of Verglas.) The original Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christan Andersen–who was from Denmark. Normally I would have gone for a Danish culture, but while the bones and arrangement of the story followed the original story, Dylan was so different from her mermaid counterpart. I felt that the change in cultures was necessary to embrace the selkie side of the story, and to make a land that would embrace Dylan as their queen.

What parts of the culture are Irish? The most obvious bit (besides the names) is the scene when Dylan first arrives in Easky, where she sees dancing villagers and hears music that sounds foreign to her. I did a fair bit of research before deciding what instruments to use in Ringsted. While Loire has the harpsichord and many stringed instruments–as mentioned in B&B–the “core” Irish historic instruments are: the fiddle, tin whistle, flute, pipe, wooden drum, harp, and mandolin. Below is a sample I used as part of my research.

Besides the music, the dancing was like nothing I’ve ever had to describe in any of the books. See a sample here! I found a bunch of traditional dances (Like the hornpipe and Ceili) but I did have to fudge my timeline a bit. I try to use aspects of the parent country from roughly 1100-1500 AD. It was the hardest to dig up info on Ireland because of its history, so I had to borrow a few things from as late as 1700 AD.

The food was loosely based off Irish and Scottish foods, but I added a lot more seafood than you would find in the typical ancient Irish/Scottish diets because Ringsted is far more dependent on the sea. Ringsted’s colors–saffron and emerald–are also traditional Irish colors. While most people associate emerald with Ireland, that’s a “new” concept. For centuries saffron was the most worn color by those from Ireland, so much so that during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I (that’s in the 1500s) the use of yellow dye was prohibited.

Whew! And there is your crash course in the inspiration of Ringsted. There was a lot more, but these topics were the most fascinating! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend, and enjoy your Monday!

Little Selkie: Themes of Sacrifice

Whenever I adapt a fairy tale I study the original (click here for my sarcastic summary of The Little Mermaid) and decide where I will depart from it (which I discussed a little bit in the previous post where I introduced Selkies) and I take a look at the original fairy tale’s theme, which is what I'm going to do in this blog post!

My adaptation (The Little Selkie) ultimately strayed a lot from the source material, but to make things simpler I'm going to focus this blog post on Hans Christen Andersen's work.

NOTE: BEWARE, SPOILERS FOR MY BOOK AHEAD!

The Hans Christian Andersen tale is conflicted. The “moral” happens in the last five lines of the story, when the Little Mermaid turns into a daughter of the air and is told she can perform good deeds to earn her soul. Moreover, there’s a fair bit of manipulation as the other daughters of the air tell the newly transformed mermaid that her years of service can be shortened/lengthened by the behavior of children. (Clearly this was supposed to motivate kids to act better.) This is somewhat set up by the conversation the Little Mermaid has with her grandmother, when they discuss how mermaids cannot go to heaven because they lack souls.

It feels a little slap-dash in its delivery, so some readers believe the Little Mermaid is a cautionary tale, and that it is meant to show people that they should remain in their station and not love above their level. As the Little Mermaid was written in 1836 and published in 1837, this probably mirrored society at the time. However, others say that the Little Mermaid is meant to encourage risk on behalf of love, as it is the Little Mermaid’s selfless actions that give her the opportunity to earn her soul as a daughter of the air.

The Little Mermaid is the first fairy tale I have adapted that didn’t have a clear or even hidden moral–besides the attempt to bribe kids into good behavior, which I wasn’t going to even try to pull off. Needless to say, I was more than a little at loss for the theme I would paint with my story. I read the Little Mermaid several times before it finally hit me that I could take an aspect of the story that is often glossed over, and enlarge on it: sacrifice for the sake of love.

The Little Mermaid is filled with small, glancing references to sacrifice for the sake of love, but the big two I’m going to go over today are found in the same part of the story–almost in the same paragraph.

Example 1:

The Little Mermaid’s sisters love her so much they cut off their hair in order to purchase an escape for her. Remember, this was 1837. Fantasy or not, women simply did not have short hair. Sheering off their hair would have been a major social no-no, but they did it for their sister.

Example 2:

The Little Mermaid refuses to use the dagger to kill the prince–which would have let her turn back into a mermaid. Killing a guy because he doesn’t love you might sound drastic, but remember that the Little Mermaid is playing with fire. Since the prince loves another she is going to die, and because she doesn’t have a soul that means she isn’t just dying, she’s disappearing forever–unlike the prince with his human soul. Even with those steep consequences, the Little Mermaid refuses to kill the prince, sacrificing herself for his happiness.

Because I wasn’t interested in creating a story that had a sad ending, or a story that hinged on Dylan being obsessed with Callan, I couldn’t use those exact examples. Instead, I decided to borrow the spirit of sacrifice for the sake of love.

From the start of the story Dylan is perfectly willing to sacrifice herself. She has her voice sealed so she cannot be weaponized–granted it was an impulsive decision and wasn’t the best option, but she does it because she wants to protect her family and the ocean. By the end of the book she has grown in character so while she’s still impulsive, she is no longer as arrogant, and she’s willing to make what is, in her mind, the greatest sacrifice ever and save the landers in the Summer Palace in exchange for Jarlath ruining her pelt. This is basically the second example I mentioned above, slightly twisted. (Think about it, instead of Dylan having the knife it is Jarlath who has it and uses it, forever exiling Dylan to her human body/making her unable to return to the sea in her sea lion body.)

The most important part of the original Little Mermaid is that she refuses to kill the prince and sacrifices herself. Dylan’s selkie story is quite different, but has a similar flavor because she also refuses to let Callan be killed, and in exchange sacrifices her life as she knows it. Still, there is a bright note in Dylan’s life. The kelpie is (reluctantly) grateful to her, and while such a creature cannot be tamed, it could be befriended…

If you'd like to read my retelling of this popular fairy tale (starring a selkie not a mermaid) here are the links to my book:

Click here for Amazon.com Or Click here for all other Amazon stores

Selkies, Seals, & Sea life

Keeping up with our Little Selkie theme, today we’re going to chat about selkies.  Selkies (also called silkies and selchies) are part of Scottish and Irish folklore. They come in male and female varieties and are said to live in the ocean as seals, and shed their skins to come on land in human bodies. Males are traditionally handsome, and stories about them often involve women who are dissatisfied with their life and/or marriage.

Female selkies, however, are usually the victims. Most folklore about female selkies are about men who steal the female selkie’s pelt, which puts her under his power. Usually the man will make the female selkie marry him because they are said to make excellent wives. Sometimes they’ll have kids and a family, but if the selkie ever finds her seal skin she will take it and return to the sea–no matter how much she loves her human kids. To add further mental anguish/anxiety on the abandoned family, a selkie can only come into contact with humans every seven years–which puts a big cramp on visiting.

When I started my research for The Little Selkie, I looked over a few old poems and texts that are about selkies (“The Seal-Woman’s Croon,” “The Selkie that didn’t forget,” “The Selkie,” “The Selkie Song,” and more) and I was struck by two things. First of all, no one specifically mentioned how capturing a selkies skin put them in your power. (Think about it. If I were a selkie and a guy grabbed my skin/pelt, I would have thumbed my nose at him and ran off. Instead the selkies stay with their captors.) Secondly, quite a few historic texts mentioned that in addition to being great swimmers, selkies had beautiful singing voices.

The singing thing was great news for me–the Little Mermaid was supposed to have the most beautiful voice out of all the mermaids in the kingdom–but I needed to hatch a plan to keep Dylan on land, which is how I came up with the idea that Jarlath could threaten to rip her pelt to shreds. I took out the seven years of no human contact part–I never found an explanation for it, I think it was added to make the sad selkie stories even sadder–and I added the singing/water magic bit to give Dylan–and her people–an offense-based power. As my selkies were guardians of the sea, I wanted Dylan to be able to face down the sea witch. With the big fuss the original Little Mermaid kicked up over taking the mermaid’s voice, I decided her power needed to be voice activated, thus tying together the two main points of the original fairy tale–the sealed voice and the mermaid on land.

An artist’s rendition of a selkie.

There was just one problem. As I was researching Harbor Seals–also called “common seals,” they live many places but most importantly they can be found on Ireland’s shores–I learned that they are smart and quick-minded, but they don’t move very quickly. While they are considered curious they aren’t nearly as playful as other sea mammals…like the sea lion.

Dylan needed to be brash and impulsive for the plot of The Little Selkie to work. If she had the same personality as Gemma from Rumpelstiltskin, she would have realized that getting word to her family about her predicament before getting her voice sealed was the wisest path. Seals are fun, but in no way are they impulsive. Sea lions, on the other hand, are always getting into mischief–they even move like pranksters. The California Sea Lion (which is what Dylan is based on) can reach a top speed of roughly 25 mph, and their cruising speed is 11 mph. Seals, on the other hand, have a top speed of 12 mph, and often cruise at much slower speeds. The sea lion is also much more flexible as it can bend in half, and it moves much more deftly on land because of its hind flippers–which it can rotate–where as  seals wiggle like caterpillars.

The sea lion was clearly the better choice for Dylan–which worked out great because it allowed me to strengthen her character. Because she has been different from her kinsmen all her life, Dylan is entirely unafraid of being unique. This gave her an edge as she lived in the Summer Palace. The majority of people would be apprehensive about being tossed into an entirely different culture and race after experiencing tragedy. Not Dylan.

Speaking of Dylan’s personality, many of you Champions have mentioned that you love how much Dylan adores food. I designed that aspect of her personality after learning that seals and sea lions can eat about five to six percent of their body weight in a day. As both of these creatures weigh well over 200 pounds, we are talking about some serious food consumption.

As you can tell, I did a lot of reading on ocean and marine life in preparation for this book, and I wove pieces of my research into the story. In example, otters really do have fuzzy baby fur, sea lions can bark under water, and sand sharks hide themselves on the ocean floor to catch prey.

The one way I did fudge my facts, though, was that I decided to combine the different ocean zones. Normally you wouldn’t find a California Sea Lion in the same water as a Harbor seal. I considered trying to keep things scientific, but in the end I decided to take creative liberties. Dylan lives in a fictional world, and I would much rather put effort into making the story better instead of keeping the location facts perfect.

That’s covers everything I wanted to discuss. Thank you for reading, Champions! Have a splendid day.