Icelandic Whaling

Speaking of medieval whaling, let's talk about Iceland's approach. As an island in the North Atlantic, with a relatively small strip of arable land around the coast, a major source of food was, of course, aquatic.

There is a story from the late 14th century about Ólafur, who went fishing off the Iceland coast and encountered a steypireydur, a blue whale! Ólafur stabbed his spear deep into its flesh, hoping the wounded beast would wind up on shore where Ólafur could claim the body.

Unfortunately for Ólafur, the whale survived enough to swim 930 miles and beach itself on the shore. It was found by a chieftain and his men, who started butchering the animal for food. How much food did it yield?

That's the great thing about the blue whale, the largest of the whales; indeed, the largest animal that ever lived on Earth (that we know of). Using sheep as a unit of measurement—a chief source of meat in Iceland—the blue whale could yield 3000 lambs' worth of meat.

How do we know that the whale in Greenland was the whale stabbed off the coast of Iceland by Ólafur? By Icelandic law, the whale killed by your hand was your prize, and so whalers would place a unique mark on their spears. The Greenland group found Ólafur's spear and mark during their butchering, but realizing that there was no way to reunite Ólafur and his quarry, they happily enjoyed their bounty. (The illustration is a 1560 depiction by Conrad Gesner.)

Icelandic texts try to be accurate about the real world, although they can add more fantastical elements. There was an attitude about blue whales that they were "friendly" and "peaceful," but that their size intimidated other whales that were more dangerous and "evil." The common advice was to keep your boat near a blue whale for safety (which makes Ólafur's attack a little sad).

But whales were so important to the Icelandic economy developed laws about them:

A whale’s size, how it died, and who owned the property where it beached all determined who got a share of the whale meat. Portioning also depended on who secured it to the shore; if an Icelander saw a dead whale floating in the sea, they were legally obligated to find a way to tether it to land. And hunters not only marked their spears with their signature emblem, they also registered those emblems with the government, improving the chances that they could claim their lawful share of any whale they speared. [source]

So what was it like if there was a dispute over a whale carcass? And what was the downside of whale lore? Let's check these scenarios out tomorrow.