THE FINWHALE FISHERY OF FINMARK. 463 



coast ; whether this was in consequence of the lateness of the 

 season, bad weather, or merely accidental, I do not know ; but 

 on my way home from Christiania, having to put in to Christian- 

 sand on October 19th through stress of weather, we saw a small 

 whale spouting just outside the entrance to the harbour, a little 

 to the east of Oxo Light. It seems odd that in all the passages 

 I have made past Christiansand I should never have seen a 

 whale thereabouts until this time when I was returning from 

 interviewing some members of this great family in Finmarken. 



This particular species does not seem to occur so far to the 

 north as Finmarken. Dr. Guldberg ('Vardo Posten,' Aug. 19th, 

 1883) says of it : — "It scarcely exceeds thirty-two or thirty-three 

 feet. The back fin is high, with the point curved backwards. 

 The colour is black above, lighter on the sides, and under the 

 belly white. A point, however, very characteristic of it is 

 that the flippers or pectoral fins are black, with a broad white 

 band in the middle. The baleen-plates are yellow, and small. 



On the whole it seems to have a less northerly habitat 



than the other larger Finwhales Its food consists 



chiefly of small fish of the Capelan, Herring, and Cod families, 

 which it pursues far up into the fjords. In the neighbourhood of 

 Bergen it is hunted in fjords which have narrow inlets, where it 

 is surrounded, and subsequently killed with harpoons or arrows 



discharged from large bows.* It is supposed that the 



young is born in the middle of the winter ; it is then six or seven 

 feet long; there is seldom more than one at a time." 



In the season of 1883 there were nineteen whalers (including 

 tugs) off the East Finmarken Coast, and the total number of 

 whales {BalcBnojiteridce) taken, was 406 ; to the eastward again 

 was one Eussian whaler, which took 20 whales ; in West Fin- 

 marken {i.e., west of the North Cape) I heard there were five 

 whalers, but I learnt nothing for certain about them or the 

 number of whales taken ; the majority of the whales killed here 

 are, I believe, Eudolphi's Korqual {B. borealis). Of the 406 

 taken off the East Finmarken coast, I was told on the best 

 authority that about 50 would be Humpbacks, and the remainder 

 — about half and half — Blue and Common Eorqual. The largest 



* Examples of these somewhat primitive weapons were exhibited in the 

 Norwegian Coui-t of the Fisheries Exhibition in London, 1883. 



