who spoiled his market by disgracing his 
commodities. “Thou art a half-headed fel- 
low,” replied one of the Directors of the 
Company, “Why didst thou not offer two or 
three hundred ducats to the physician, to 
persuade him that they were the horns of 
the unicorn?” 
In studying the history of narwhal 
exploitation, we have focused on two 
fairly well-defined centers of the ani- 
mal’s abundance: the Greenland Sea 
and Baffin Bay-Davis Strait. The only 
major narwhal populations known are 
found in the vicinity of these deep, cold 
basins. No attempt has been made to 
assess the size or status of the Green- 
land Sea stock but it probably consists 
of several thousand narwhals. Strag- 
glers will occasionally reach the British 
Isles and the south coast of Iceland. 
Small numbers, possibly from the Green- 
land Sea stock, are known to have ap- 
peared near the Russian islands of 
Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land 
in the past. Recent reports from the So- 
viet Union, however, indicate that nar- 
whals are now seen only infrequently in 
these waters. 
The Baffin Bay-Davis Strait stock, 
which may consist of two or more sepa- 
rate populations, is larger and better 
known than the Greenland Sea stock. 
In summer, concentrations of narwhals 
are found in Lancaster Sound, Smith 
Sound, and northern Hudson Bay. Re- 
cent surveys suggest that the Lancaster 
Sound component may include more 
than 20,000 whales. Strays from the 
Baffin Bay-Davis Strait stock some- 
times wander as far south as New- 
foundland. 
Outside of these areas, the narwhal’s 
occurrence is sporadic. It appears only 
occasionally along the north coast of 
Alaska, and rarely ventures south of 
Bering Strait. Soviet scientists claim 
that a small population is present in the 
northern Chukchi Sea, but the basis for 
their statement is unclear. 
Narwhals were probably hunted by 
Europeans for commercial purposes as 
early as the tenth century, soon after 
the Vikings began to establish perma- 
nent settlements in southwest Green- 
land. Norwegian merchants called 
regularly at the colonies, and ivory and 
skins were important export goods. 
Many of the colonists’ seasonal hunting 
expeditions to the north were spon- 
sored by the Norse Greenland Church, 
which took a special interest in the ac- 
quisition of walrus and narwhal ivory. 
In fact, settlers sometimes paid their 
Peter’s pence, or tithe, in ivory. 
We have not been very successful in 
documenting the volume of this early 
trade. In 1126, tusks “mark’d with 
Danish letters writ upon them with 
some glutinous matter, scarce to be ef- 
faced by the art of men," were found on 
an Icelandic beach near the Pool of 
Corpses, the site of a shipwreck. These 
runic letters were interpreted as the 
marks of individual sailors who were 
bringing the curious “whales’ teeth” 
home from Greenland as souvenirs. 
Even if this was a common practice, 
however, it probably accounted for rel- 
atively few tusks. Another ship with a 
cargo of "unicorn horns” is said to have 
gone aground at Iceland in 1242. This 
first, poorly documented episode of 
commercial exploitation, which we sus- 
pect to have been modest in its impact 
on the narwhal population, probably 
ended during the late 1300s as com- 
merce between Europe and the Viking 
colonies declined. 
Aside from continued native hunt- 
ing, the next phase apparently began 
early in the seventeenth century. Brit- 
ish explorers in Davis Strait, most of 
them having read Martin Frobisher’s 
description of a dead narwhal found 
floating at the mouth of Frobisher Bay 
in 1577, recognized the narw hal but sel- 
Narwhals have been observed 
crossing tusks with one another both 
above and below water. Biologists 
speculate as to whether more serious 
combat takes place during the 
whales’ breeding season. 
dom hunted it. The tusks they brought 
home had usually been obtained from 
native hunters in exchange for glass or 
iron trinkets and beads. Dutch traders 
were active along the West Greenland 
coast. The logbook of a Dutch schooner 
anchored in a Greenland fiord in 1652, 
as summarized by the Danish historian 
Finn Gad, states: 
Immediately the Eskimos sailed out to the 
ships with trout, seal skins, and “sealskin 
coats,” but they were well aware that the 
foreigners were most eager to get hold of 
some "unicorn” horn. The Eskimos had no 
qualms about selling their harpoon and dart 
heads and other bone objects, even whole 
tusks, and they bartered all this for nails, 
knives and needles. 
Although British and Dutch seamen 
took advantage of every’ opportunity to 
barter tusks away from Eskimos, it was 
the Danes who cultivated and serviced 
the wider European market for nar- 
whal ivory. As one seventeenth-century 
pundit, Thomas Bartholinus, declared: 
Nowadays the increase of [Danish] com- 
merce with Greenland and Spitsbergen . . . 
has revealed the nature and frequent avail- 
ability of the tusk. At all events, our mer- 
chants have filled whole cargo vessels with 
this alleged horn of recent years and would 
import it into Europe as genuine unicorn, 
had not the experts tom away the mask and 
recognized the tusk as originating from the 
ocean. 
The "unmasking” of the unicorn and 
the increased supply of tusks probably 
softened the demand for narwhal ivory 
in Europe, but still there was a strong 
demand in the Orient, Russia, and the 
Middle East. An amusing story is told 
of how one Mukarrab Khan balked at 
paying 5,000 rupees for a unicorn’s 
horn offered for sale by the British East 
India Company. Before buying it, he 
tested its effect on a poisoned pigeon, 
goat, and man. All died, and the offer 
was turned down. 
The Oriental connection is especially 
intriguing. Although the Dutch estab- 
lished a lucrative monopoly on trade 
with Japan at the beginning of the sev- 
enteenth century, it was not until the 
late eighteenth century that narwhal 
ivory became a recognized item of licit 
exchange there. A botanist who visited 
Nagasaki in 1775 reported: “The Japa- 
nese have an extravagant opinion of 
[the tusk's] medical virtues and powers 
to prolong life, fortify the animal spir- 
its, assist the memory, and cure all 
complaints.” Narwhal tusks were ap- 
parently often used to ornament tem- 
ples and other places of worship, and 
fancy dagger hilts were sometimes 
53 
