Whaling in the Faroe Islands, or (from the Faroese terms , meaning pilot whale, and , meaning killing), is a type of drive hunting that involves herding various species of whales and dolphins, but primarily pilot whales, into shallow bays to be beached, killed, and butchered. Each year, an average of around 700 long-finned pilot whales are caught, alongside varying numbers of Atlantic white-sided dolphins.
The practice dates back to the 9th century, and many Faroe Islanders consider eating whales to be an important part of their history. Since 1948, the hunt has been regulated by the Faroese authorities, required its participants to be trained, involved modern boats and communications, and been supervised by police.
The hunt has been under increasing scrutiny since the 1980s. Domestically, concerns have arisen over the potential toxicity of whale meat, particularly for young children and pregnant women. Internationally, animal rights groups, who consider the hunts cruel and unnecessary, have targeted them with protests, boycotts, and occasional direct interventions.
History The evidence for whaling on the Faroe Islands dates back to the early days of Norse settlement (800–900 AD) during the Viking Age. After 999 AD, when Sigmundur Brestisson brought Christianity to the Faroes, the islanders began keeping records of their whale kills for the purpose of the taxes due to the King of Norway. There is archaeological evidence of whaling in the form of pilot whale bones found in household remains dating back to around 1200 AD, and laws regulating the whale hunt appear in the 1298 Sheep Letter. Written records of whale kills survive from 1584, and the statistical records are considered particularly reliable from 1709 to the present.
The 20th century saw increased regulation of Faroese whaling. On 4 June 1907, the Danish (governor) and (sheriff) sent the first draft for whaling regulations to the Danish authorities in Copenhagen, and in 1932 the first modern whaling legislation was introduced. As a part of the Home Rule act of 1948, the powers relating to legislating on and regulating fishing and hunting on the Faroes were transferred from the Danish Parliament to the Faroese Parliament. The 21st century has seen ongoing regulation alongside a Faroese whaling culture revival both as part of "an international preoccupation with reclaiming, preserving and reconstituting the past" and a national and local "quest for defining identity".
The whale hunt
There are no fixed hunting seasons, but whale hunts are likely to happen during spring and summer periods, from June to October. Whale drives only take place when sea and weather conditions permit. When the men hear of a (a whale pod spotted close to shore), and after approval from the , the fishermen already at sea head towards the whales and wait for others to arrive. Women usually do not actively take part in the whale hunt, but support it as bystanders or onlookers.
Whaling regulations specify how the school of whales is to be driven ashore, and the drive works by surrounding the pilot whales with a wide semicircle of boats. On the signal of the whale hunt foremen, stones attached to lines are thrown into the water behind the pilot whales to prevent their escape and the boats drive the whales towards an authorised beach or fjord, where the animals are driven to beach themselves. In older times, the boats which were used to the whale hunt were traditional wooden rowing boats known as ; today they use wooden or fibreglass boats with engines. In the village of Vágur however they have preserved ten traditional whaling boats, the oldest dating back to 1873. These boats are still in use, but for pleasure trips.
Once beached, the pilot whales are killed by a single deep cut through the dorsal area made with a special whaling knife, a that severs the spinal cord. The began to be used in 2011, and became a legal requirement in 2015. After the whales are confirmed to be dead, their necks are cut open with a , so that as much blood as possible can run from the whale in order to better preserve the meat.
The pilot whales that are not beached were historically stabbed in the blubber with a sharp hook, called a (a kind of gaff), and then pulled ashore. In 1993, a blunt gaff or was invented that could be used to hold the beached whales steady by their blowholes and pull them ashore. In 1985, the Faroe Islands outlawed the use of spears () and harpoons () in the hunt, as these weapons were considered to be unnecessarily cruel to the whales. According to the 2013 Whale Hunt Law, whales must be either ashore or stuck on the seabed before they can lawfully be killed, and, as of 26 January 2017, only the men waiting on the beaches with , and are permitted to kill the whales, and it is no longer permitted to harpoon the whales while at sea, or hook those outside of the encircling net.
Hunted species and populations
The main target of the Faroese whale hunt is the long-finned pilot whale. In 1993, it was estimated that there were a total of 780,000 short and long-finned pilot whales in the North Atlantic. The study combined both as they are hard to distinguish at sea. The North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission has noted that there is little current information on the abundance of pilot whales in the North Atlantic. The American Cetacean Society (ACS) has estimated that there may be as many as one million long-finned pilot whales and 200,000 short finned animals., retrieved 26 July 2015 The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in its Red List of Threatened Species, rates both species of pilot whale as "least concern", and has estimated that the long-finned pilot whale subpopulation around the Faroes is around 100,000 individuals and that the Faroese catch is "likely sustainable".
According to Faroese legislation, it is also permitted to hunt certain species of small cetaceans other than pilot whales. These include the Atlantic white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus acutus), common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), white-beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris), and harbour porpoise (Phocaena phocaena). The hunting of these species is carried out in much the same way as the pilot whale hunt, with the exception of harbour porpoises, which are killed with shotguns. Occasionally, the northern bottlenose whale is also opportunistically killed when individuals stray too close to shore, or, on occasion, are stranded. The hunting of larger whale species (fin and minke whales) ended in 1984 in the Faroe Islands.
Impression
As the use of harpoons, spears, and firearms at sea is now prohibited, the whales are now all killed on beaches in full view of spectators. The process, in which a pilot whale's dorsal region is cut, their spine severed and their main arteries opened, is naturally graphic in nature. The entire sea surrounding a whale hunt beaching location tends to turn a bloody red, and this vivid imagery can have a shocking effect on onlookers. In this regard, the whale hunt is not considered a tourism-friendly practice, as compared to, say, the mattanza tuna fishing process in Sicily and Sardinia. In 2006, Ólavur Sjúrðaberg, the chairman of the Faroese Pilot Whalers' Association, said of the pilot whale hunt: "I'm sure that no one who kills his own animals for food is unmoved by what he does. You want it done as quickly and with as little suffering as possible for the animal."
Locations
The best locations for whale drives have highly specific "coastal geomorphology", with sandy bottoms, a lack of large rocks or mud, and lack what are known locally as a marbakki, which are sharp land shelves close to shore that whales can see clearly with their echolocation and tend to avoid. At appropriate locations, whales can readily be driven close to or fully ashore, and can sometimes even accidentally strand themselves.
There are close to 30 historic whale hunt locations (). These include: Bøur, Fámjin, Fuglafjørður, Funningsfjørður, Húsavík, Hvalba (three sites), Hvalvík, Hvannasund, Klaksvík (in both bays), Kollafjørður, Leynar, Miðvágur, Norðragøta, Norðskáli, Sandavágur, Sandur, Syðrugøta, Tjørnuvík, Tórshavn (in Sandagerð), Trongisvágur, Vágur, Vestmanna, Viðvík (near Hvannasund, but on the east coast of Viðoy) and Øravík.
Catch statistics
Records of the drive exist in part since 1584, and continuously from 1709. Faroese whaling catches have gone through several peaks and troughs in the last century, with notable peaks just before World War II, in the 1950s and 1980s. Each catch is divided into the Faroese 'skinns', a unit of measurement for dividing whale carcasses into combined meat and blubber portions weighing about 75 kg.
Period Drives Whales SkinnDrives/YearWhales/YearSkinn/Year 1709–1950 1,195 178,259 1,360,1604.96738.665,643.82 1951–1960 122 18,772 99,10213.562,085.7811,011.33 1961–1970 130 15,784 79,58814.441,753.788,843.11 1971–1980 85 11,311 69,0269.441,256.787,669.56 1981–1990 176 18,806 108,71419.562,089.5612,079.33 1991–2000 101 9,212 66,28411.221,023.567,364.89 2001–2010 81 6,265 49,2679.00696.115,474.11 2011–2016 47 3,394 24,0019.40678.804,800.20
The largest catch of pilot whales in a single season in recent decades was 1,203 animals in 2017. The average, since 2000, has been 670 animals. In the same period, the average number of white-sided dolphins caught has been 298 animals.
On 15 September 2021, a highly unusual white-sided dolphin hunt took place in which 1,428 were caught and slaughtered in a single day. This was nearly five times the average annual catch of this species and roughly double the previous record number of the animals caught in recent decades. The previous recent record was a total of 773 of the animals caught across the entire season in 2002.
Human casualties
On Saturday 13 February 1915 there was a whale hunt in Sandvík. During the drive, two boats capsized because of rough seas with 15 men on board, fourteen of whom lost their lives, while one was rescued. The men came from the villages Sandvík and Hvalba. The only man who survived the accident, Petur í Køkini, wrote a letter on the following day in which he described the accident and his loss of his son and his brother. The letter begins:
Cultural significance
The meat and blubber of the pilot whale are a traditional part of the diet of the Faroese community. Marine mammal blubber has also historically been processed for lamp oil and for medicinal purposes. The skin of pilot whales was once used to make fishing lines and ropes, while their stomachs were used as fishing floats. Other parts of the animals were used to make shoes.
Faroese cuisine is generally dominated by the use of animal products, as only about 2% of the 1,393 km2 of land on the islands is at all suitable for arable crops. As a result, during the winter months, the Faroe Islanders traditionally eat mostly salted or dried food, including mutton, fish, seabirds and the meat and blubber from sea mammals.
The pilot whale hunt is also a recurring motif in Faroese literature and art, such as the paintings by Sámal Joensen-Mikines, which are exhibited in the Faroese art museum in Tórshavn. Whale hunts were also once celebrated with a traditional cultural dance known as the grindadansur, and in 1835, one Danish governor () of the Faroe Islands, Christian Pløyen, published a whaling ballad called the . Faroese place names often speak explicitly to whaling culture, such as that of the town of Hvalvík, which means 'whale bay'.
Culinary tradition