MY ADVENTURES: WHALING IN THE FAROE ISLANDS / GRINDADRÀP

Despite continued campaigns by activists to stop whaling in the Faroe Islands, locals cling to this ancient tradition.

My stepfather is from the Faroe Islands, so when he called us during our stay there and told us that it was whaling in one of the villages, we traveled out to Tjørnuvík. On the way out we met quite a few cars driving in the opposite direction, indicating that the murder was over. We still drove out and I was a little shocked when this was what we saw when we arrived.

One can clearly see that the sea was still filled with blood. 43 pilots lost their lives this day.

Whaling in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic is the harvesting and slaughter of long-finned pilot whales when they are driven to swim near the islands, and has been practiced since about the time of the first Norse settlements on the islands. The whaling is mentioned in the Sheep Letter, a Faroese law from 1298, a supplement to the Norwegian Gulating law.

Around 800 long-finned pilot whales and some Atlantic white-sided dolphins are slaughtered annually, mainly during the summer. The hunts, called grindadráp in Faroese, are non-commercial and are organized on a community level. Anyone who has a special training certificate on slaughtering a pilot whale with the spinal-cord lance can participate.

The two sea stacks in the background are Risin and Kellingin. The name Risin og Kellingin means The Giant and the Witch (or Hag) and relates to an old legend about their origins. The Giant (Risin) is the 71m stack further from the coast, and the witch (Kellingin) is the 68m pointed stack nearer land, standing with her legs apart.

When you drive to Tjørnuvik, the road stops. Feels like you are driving to “the end”.

We came in contact with someone who said that the meat was to be distributed in the village Eiði around 6 pm. So then we went there and this was the sight we met:

Faroe Island Whaling is a 1,000-Year Old Tradition.

After a while they called up who got what whale and started to divide it up.

There were quite a few people on the pier in the end and we left shortly after they started cutting the meat.

All pictures taken with my camera.

If you want to read more about this tradition, you can simply google “whaling” or “whaling in Faroe Islands”.

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