What Do You Call a Group of Selkies?

A Writer’s Rabbit Hole into Folklore

One of the unexpected pleasures of writing fantasy is the research. And I love doing it. When you start building a magical world, you quickly discover that mythology, folklore, and language are deep wells of inspiration.

They are also, occasionally, excellent ways to lose an entire afternoon.

Recently I was writing a short story involving selkies for my newsletter readers—a little glimpse into the wider world of Rowanswood. In Celtic folklore, selkies are seal folk who can shed their skins and walk on land, caught forever between the pull of the sea and the temptations of the human world. The scene was racing along beautifully: the inciting incident (kelpies!), the flight from danger, the sense of the sea pressing close to the edges of the world.

And then I hit a snag. What do you call a group of selkies?

The Problem with Selkies

In nature, seals gather in colonies or rookeries. Those are perfectly sensible zoological terms. But they felt entirely wrong for selkies.

Selkies belong to folklore. They are shape-shifters, creatures caught between land and sea, between human life and the pull of the ocean. Calling them a rookery of selkies felt like something a marine biologist might say, not something whispered in an old story beside the fire.

So I began experimenting with possibilities.

A tide of selkies?

A drift of selkies?

A song of selkies?

Each had a certain charm, but none of them quite captured the image in my mind.

When Language Meets Story

This is one of the delightful frustrations of writing fantasy: language matters.

Collective nouns are wonderfully evocative. English is full of them.

We have:

• a murder of crows
• a parliament of owls
• a school of fish

Each phrase carries an entire mood.

So when folklore creatures are involved, the choice of words becomes part of the storytelling. I wanted something that felt a little magical, a little mysterious—something that suggested the flash of light on water and the quicksilver movement of seals beneath the waves.

And then the right word appeared.

A Shimmer of Selkies

The phrase that finally felt right was:

a shimmer of selkies.

A shimmer suggests movement and light. It hints at something half-seen: a flash of silver in dark water, the ripple of magic along the tide line. Most importantly, it felt like something that might belong in a story.

Only once that phrase appeared could the scene continue. The selkies gathered, the story moved forward, and the research rabbit hole finally released me.

The Joy (and Danger) of Research

Writers often joke about research becoming procrastination, but in fantasy it’s often part of the creative process of world-building.

A small question can open an entire world:

• What legends exist about selkies?
• How do Celtic stories describe the sea?
• What language did people once use for magical creatures?

Before long you may find yourself surrounded by books on mythology and folklore, wondering how you arrived there. Anyone who looked at the pile of books on my desk or my search history during the writing of this story would probably conclude I was either planning a novel or summoning something. Speaking purely hypothetically, of course.

Folklore creatures appear throughout the world of Rowanswood. If you’re curious about another fascinating piece of mythic language, you might enjoy my exploration of what the word “crone” really means in folklore and mythology.

Your Turn

As far as I can tell, and extensive research can tell me, there is no widely accepted traditional collective noun for selkies. Which means writers are free to imagine their own.

For now, I’m quite fond of a shimmer of selkies gathering beneath the moonlit sea. But if you know a traditional term—or have a better suggestion—I’d love to hear it.

A Note for Writers

If you enjoy folklore, fantasy worldbuilding, and magical storytelling prompts, you might also enjoy my free Urban Fantasy Writing Prompts guide, which includes thirty prompts and a printable writing worksheet.

P.S.

If you enjoy folklore, fantasy worldbuilding, and stories set in the magical village of Rowanswood, you might enjoy my newsletter. Subscribers occasionally receive short stories set in the world — including the selkie tale that inspired this little linguistic rabbit hole.