The first Norwegians lived along the coast. Excavations and rock carvings show that the meat, blubber and skins of seals and whales constituted an important part of these people's livelihood.
The written account of the North Norwegian chieftain Ottar's visit to King Alfred of England towards the end of the 9th centurys, tells of the catch of large whales, probably Greenland whales or black right whales.
Norway's earliest laws detail how whales are to be divided among those who took part in the hunt and the owner of the shore where the whale was landed.
In earlier times, the minke whale was chased into suitable inlets or sounds before being killed with arrows or harpoons. In certain places, this tradition was maintained right up until the turn of the century.
The minke whale has always kept close to land on its migration past the Lofoten Islands. The motorization of the fishing fleet towards the end of the 1920's, provided the fishermen with the opportunity of catching minke whales on the open sea.
Big Business
Whaling was one of the first large-scale organised enterprises in Europe. The
market for whale oil began to be developed as early as in the 12th century by the
Basques who caught right whales (Greenland whales and black right whales) in
the Bay of Biscay. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the industry was dominated by
wealthy English and Dutch interests, hunting in the Arctic Ocean and along the
coasts of Norway, Spitzbergen, Greenland and Newfoundland. The investments
and risks involved were enormous, but so were the potential profits. The stocks of
right whales were depleted. The great stocks of blue whales, finbacks and sei
whales, though, were safe as long as the whalers only used hand harpoons and
sailing ships. The harpoon gun, grenade harpoons and steam ships made it
possible to catch these swift-moving whales. This technology was developed by
the Norwegian Sven Foyn from Tønsberg by the Oslo Fjord, who first put it into
practical use in 1863. This was the beginning of a new and expansive era in
industrial whaling.
New whaling grounds were discovered as the old ones were depleted. The steam vats used in the boiling down of blubber, meat and bones to oil, were moved from land to on board the boats. The floating whale oil factories were equipped with a gate astern where the whole whale could be hauled up for flensing.
At the turn of the century, the Antarctic became the most important whaling ground, and Norway and England the greatest whaling nations of the time. But after the Second World War the Soviet Union and Japan took over to an increasing extent.
The whaling expeditions were run by major shipowners on the basis of international capital. The Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis also took part in the 1950's with his expedition "Olympic Challenger", systematically violating the feeble international regulations on whaling.
Behind the scenes, the world's biggest food producing company, Unilever, was pulling the strings. Whale oil had become an indispensable raw material in both the foodstuffs industry and the chemical industry. The first signs that things were going wrong began to be noticed in the 1930's. By the end of the 1960's, the whaling adventure in the Antarctic was definitely over. The resources had been pillaged.
Today, cheap vegetable and synthetic oils have taken the place of whale oil. The minke whale was too small to be of interest to the whale oil industry. In the early 1970's, a limited hunt of minke whales in the Antarctic was begun by Japan, for which the meat was the most important product.