Mermaids–and mermen–appear as consistently in history as faeries and dragons.

Like their “mythological” counterparts, mermaids were considered real until the early 20th century.

In fact, although we think of Disney’s Ariel when we hear the word “mermaids,” their actual history is ancient, well-founded, and–until recent years–treated as fact, not fantasy.

In this article series, we [...]

Similar to people, merfolk come in different colors and different sizes.

In one of the earliest written reports of modern times, the 1608 log of Henry Hudson described a mermaid on his second voyage. Two of his crewmen, Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner, saw her at about 71 degrees north in the Barrents Sea, near [...]