Whale Laws & Lore

In the sixth season of the TV show Vikings, a whale has washed up on shore. One character, Kjetill, claims it for his own. Others insist that the bounty be shared—it was an enormous source of food and materials—but Kjetill refuses, and even kills those who want to share it. Unlikely?

Not really. Both Icelandic tales Grettissaga (the Saga of Grettir) and Fóstbræðrasaga (the Saga of the Sworn Brothers) relate the incident of a long-lasting feud between two families when the rights to a beached whale turns to a lasting feud between groups.

The situation would be easily resolved if the ownership of the beach itself were not in dispute. Iceland at the time was a newly inhabited country and land rights were not always firmly established. Without having community agreement as to the rightful owner of the land on which a resource was found, conflict could easily arise.

I also promised in yesterday's post to discuss the "downside" of whale lore. I was referring to the other part that whales played in the past: as frightening supernatural creatures. In Friðþjófssaga (the Saga of Friðþjóf), Friðþjóf and his crew are at sea and trying to reach land. They are hindered by a whale, but not just any whale. This whale has two witches riding its back, sent to harass Friðþjóf by an evil king who is his enemy.

The witches should not surprise us. Every European culture (and others) have supernatural creatures and magic practitioners in their lore. Tomorrow let's look at some of the supernatural lore peculiar to Iceland.

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, the sea.

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 the metal blade of 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 that laws were developed about hunting 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. 

Whaling in the Middle Ages

Yesterday's post referred to Ohthere of Hålogaland supporting himself partially through whaling. Whaling centuries ago should not be a shocking idea: evidence for whaling in Alaska has been found dating to 1000BCE, and there are neolithic depictions in Korea that may be about whaling as far back as 6000BCE.

Rather than going out into the open sea to catch a large animal, a common method was to take several small boats away from a shore where it was known that whales and dolphins consort, then forming a barrier in an attempt to drive them to beach themselves on shore.

Another method that presents less danger to sailors is to use a drogue, a floating object that is attached to a harpoon by a rope. If the harpoon makes solid contact with a whale, the buoyancy of the drogue makes it difficult for the animal to descend and tires it out so that the sailors can catch up with it. Melville's Moby Dick refers to druggs for this purpose.

Petroglyphs in Korea show boats surrounding sperm whales and humpback whales, but most whaling tackled smaller prey (see relative sizes here). Large whales were looked on to the medieval mind as scary and dangerous, but the smaller ones were gladly hunted for food and materials. One inventory of whales from the Middle Ages mentions the pilot whale (between five and ten meters long) as a popular target for its relatively small size and the ability to drive it into shore. Minke whales were also valuable due to their smaller size.

Smaller whales, porpoises, and dolphins that were driven to beach themselves were then clubbed or knifed. The body parts were divided equally among the participants. Some animals wound up on shore on their own and a call would go out to gather and finish it off (if it were still alive) and share the spoils before they spoiled.

The Dominicans Vincent of Beauvais (c.1190 - 1264) and Bishop Albertus Magnus (c.1200 - 1280) wrote of observing whaling; they both described it as a group project. Bede (672 - 735) also mentions the capture of whales.

Iceland had some very strict laws about whaling, which we will talk about tomorrow.

Ohthere of Hålogaland

When King Alfred the Great asked for an Anglo-Saxon translation of Orosius' Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, or "Seven Books of History Against the Pagans," he was fine with adding things that he thought worthy. One was the travels of Wulfstan of Hedeby, asked by Alfred to open up trade with northern Europe. The other was the account of the travels of Ohthere of Hålogaland.

Ohthere claimed that he lived in the extreme north of Norway. Hålogaland has been identified with the far north, today called Nord-Norge. He seems to have been quite wealthy, claiming to own a herd of 600 reindeer, and also making his money from whaling, walrus-hunting, and tribute from Lapps.

According to the account tacked onto Orosius:

Ohthere told his lord, King Alfred, that he lived northernmost of all the Northmen. He said that he lived in the north of the country by the West Sea. He said though the land stretches a long way north from there, yet it is completely unpopulated except for a few places here and there, where Finnas [Sami] camp, hunting in winter and fishing by the sea in summer. [source]

He was some kind of leader who received tribute from the Lapps:

That tribute consists in animal skins, bird feathers, whalebone and in ship's ropes made from the hide of whales and seals.  Each one pays according to his rank.  The noblest must pay fifteen marten skins, and five reindeer, and one bear skin, and ten ambers of feathers, and a bear, or otter-skin coat, and two ship's ropes, both to be sixty ells long, one to be made of whale's hide, the other of seal's. [source]

He also refers to the usefulness of walrus bones and that he brought some to give to Alfred.

He traveled widely, sometimes just for the sheer joy of discovery it seems. He describes sailing up the coast of Norway and going "over the top" and south again to what is called the White Sea, finding wasteland. At so me point he traveled to England, where he met Alfred. He offers the earliest details in England of what the Scandinavian countries were like.  In fact, his account is the earliest use we know of the term "Norway" (norðweg), as well as the name "Denmark" (dena mearc).

Ohthere's account brings up a question I never thought of: if they hunted whales in the Middle Ages, how did they go about it? How dangerous was it in their smaller ships? Tomorrow let's talk about the feasibility of whaling in the Middle Ages.