First tale in a new series I'm beginning for a canon I'm building. This plays heavily into a bunch of other stuff I'm establishing, and will be posting in the coming months. I hope you enjoy this!
Many thanks to Tufto, Weryllium, Vacuum, Modern_Erasmus, mlister, Shio, Sterbai, DrMagnus, Mortos/Icepick, Spookypizza, Varaxous, MrWrong, and anyone else I might be forgetting.
Actual Folklore Relations and References:
So, Orcadian folklore is pretty cool, and I've spent a ton of time researching it. Here are some of the little things about this tale that you might notice.
- Finfolkaheem (literally "Finfolk's Home") was said to be the home of the Finnfolk, a race of shape shifting aquatic humanoids, known for their cunning, and tendency to kidnap people to be their spouses. It was supposedly a grand palace complex located at the bottom of the sea, and made of crystal.
- Hildaland was supposedly a moving invisible island that served as the Finnfolk's home away from home.
- Each of the five tribes name is merely a different way in which Selkie was spelled (with the exception of the Finnfolk.)
- The actual "Finnfolk" referred to in this tale are actually more of a hybrid of the Selkie/Finnfolk myth. They have anatomical features very similar to humans, and as has been pointed out in other articles within this canon, they have a second layer of epidermal tissue that they use to avoid persecution by Humans, not necessarily in this time frame, but definitely in the future.
- Selkie women were often kidnapped by humans, or tricked into giving their seal skin away, thus trapping them with a human spouse. Because Selkie women were often quite beautiful, this is a frequent theme in Orcadian mythos, and I poke fun at it with a lot of the stuff in the first section of the tale.
- Mud-Men/Women is a reference to Irish Author Eoin Colfer's book series Artemis Fowl, a childhood favorite of mine, and a huge influence on many of my more fantastical writings.
Names:
- Alva: Elf Like woman
- Jörð: Earth, this is the name of Thor's mother in Norse mythology.
- Vænn: Handsome or Beautiful
- ørlǫg: Destiny/Fate/War
- Uhtred: practical, systematic, and thorough
- Frami: fame, growth, success; advancement, benefit, profit; luck; courage, ability
- Triemides: routes with latin Tri for 3, and spanish mida for measurement. Triple Measurement, or Three times the amount.
This is something I spent a lot of time and effort working and honing, and will be doing a similar thing with the next tale. My prose tends, in most situations to be either be far to descriptive, or too minimalistic and I feel like here I hit a perfect balance. The description of the Astral Plane, and the entire first section of the tale were some of my favorite things to have written. The back and forth between Triemides and the Mither were also enjoyable as Triemides slowly starts to trust this otherworld entity.
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