HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 



51 



Figure ly. Porpoise hunt in 

 Aliddelfart {Denmark). 

 {Alohl Hansen, 1954.) 



for burning and the meat for human consumption. Porpoise meat was in 

 fact considered a great delicacy at the time, and a chronicle from the year 

 1426 reports that Henry VI of England was very fond of it. We also know 

 that during the Coronation Dinner of his successor, Henry VH, it was 

 served up in various guises - both as a main course and also in pies. Bound 

 to tradition though they are, the English have now relinquished this 

 delicacy, although we know for certain that the Court continued to enjoy 

 it until late in the seventeenth century. 



Porpoises and Bottlenose Dolphins have also provided food for the 

 inhabitants of Middelfart, a small Danish town on Fyn, ever since the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century. Porpoises are caught mainly from 

 November to February, when they migrate from the Baltic to the North 

 Sea (Fig. 17). The animals' path is blocked, and the water is beaten with 

 sticks, until the porpoises are driven into a small fjord which is quickly 

 sealed off. They are then chased ashore and killed with long knives. 

 During good years in the past, the villagers have often caught more than 

 3,000 animals annually in this way. When the oil market dropped, regular 

 catches ceased, and in 1892 the whole business on Fyn folded up 

 altogether, though since then it has been revived on occasion and par- 

 ticularly during the lean years of the First and Second World Wars. Still, 

 the villagers never forgot their old tradition, for a Dutch expedition which 

 visited the region from December 1957 to January 1958 with the aim of 

 capturing live porpoises returned with excellent results. While the people 

 of Middelfart were primarily interested in the oil, other people, par- 

 ticularly on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, hunted porpoises and 



