1 6 WHALES 



events - good or bad. Thus Crantzius thought that a young whale, 

 captured near Lübeck in 1333, heralded the war between England and 

 France which broke out soon afterwards, while the sudden Swedish 

 invasion of Holstein (1643) was said to have been foretold by the stranding 

 of two killer whales. Procopius, on the other hand, looked upon the capture 

 of a large whale near Byzantium as an omen portending the end of the 

 Gothic wars. 



Greeks and Romans alike lived at peace with whales - at least with 

 the large ones, but the early inhabitants of the coasts of Western and 

 Northern Europe were quick to cast envious glances at the enormous 

 wealth of flesh and oil stored within their colossal bodies. Probably it all 

 began with a stranded animal, continued with 'forced landings', the 

 animals being surrounded and chased ashore, and, as boats and weapons 

 improved, ended by killing whales at sea. 



Norway is a country rich in mountains, in trees and in ore, but with 

 not very much arable or grazing land. It has, however, a long coastline 

 with thousands of fjords, bays and small islands, a coastline that seems as 

 if made by nature for supplying man with seafood. Throughout the ages, 

 the population has relied on the sea for supplies, and we need not be sur- 

 prised, therefore, that the oldest drawings of seals and porpoises come from 

 Norway. And it is certainly no accident that the oldest whale hunters were 

 Norwegians. No one knows when it all began, but as early as a.d. 890, 

 one Ottar from Northern Norway reported his vo)-age through the Arctic 

 Ocean to Alfred the Great of England, and mentioned that he had come 

 across whalermen near Tromsö. He did not mention what kind of whales 

 they had been hunting; they may have been walruses, or perhaps Biscayan 

 (or North Atlantic) Right Whales, although the Norwegian Kongespeiler 

 (which dates from about 1250) mentions that sailors were afraid of the 

 Slettibaka, and Sletbag happens to be the modern Icelandic name for the 

 North Atlantic Right Whale. The Icelanders probably learned whaling 

 from the Norwegians. 



The Biscayan Right Whale is called a Right Whale because in the early 

 days of whaling it was the most profitable source of baleen and oil. In 

 contradistinction to the Rorquals which are caught nowadays, Right 

 Whales have no dorsal fin and no grooves on the underside. They have 

 markedly arched upper jaws and long and narrow whalebone plates some 

 8 feet long. The Biscayan or North Atlantic Right Whale reaches a length 

 of 46-60 feet and has characteristic white or yellow horny bumps round 

 the chin and on the forward part of the upper jaw (Figs. 9, 136 and 139). 

 Its 'head bump' has always been known as the 'bonnet' because it is so 

 reminiscent of that article of female millinery. The Biscayan Right Whale, 



