The pilot whale in the living room: the Faroe Islands' whale hunt

By Catherine Watson
05:15 PM PDT, July 03, 2009

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The Faroese tourism industry markets the islands as a bastion of environmental and social consciousness -- clean air, clean water, good salmon and trout fishing, huge flocks of migratory birds, magnificent scenery, great hiking, fine museums and a rich cultural heritage.

All this is so true that in 2007 the Faroes were ranked first on National Geographic Traveler's "World's Best Islands" list. The magazine called them "authentic, unspoiled and likely to remain so."

But to outsiders like me, one tradition doesn't fit the image. Call it the whale in the living room, or the grindadrap, the periodic harvest of long-finned pilot whales.

I couldn't get my mind around the idea of killing whales, even though I knew this whale hunt was unique to the Faroes, even though I knew it was an ancient custom and even though I knew this species was not endangered.

The Faroese estimate that there are 778,000 long-finned pilot whales in the North Atlantic. The islanders' annual take averages less than 1,000.

Unlike whalers in Norway, Russia and Japan who use huge ships, electronic tracking and powerful harpoons, Faroese men use what they always have -- short knives and their bare hands.

And in the Faroes, the whales come to the hunters. No one knows when, where or if they will appear. "You could be sitting in your kitchen, having a cup of tea, and look out the window and see whales," one islander said.

When a pod is spotted offshore, men from nearby communities go out in small boats and herd the whales onto a beach, then jump into the water and cut the animal's neck veins and spine.

"They have taken to heart the critics," the manager of the Tórshavn tourist office told me, so the killing is swift -- the whales die within minutes. "But when you kill something in water, it is bloody."

The meat and blubber are never sold commercially or exported. It's shared the same way it has been for generations, parceled out to local participants and to schools, hospitals and old people's homes.

I took comfort from something a tour boat captain told me: "It's a dying tradition," he said. "The whales are polluted," with mercury and other toxins, and children and women of child-bearing age are urged to avoid them. "If you don't grow up eating something like that, you are not going to start eating it when you are 40 or 50."

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